


The Things We Do for Love

by Flavato_Forever



Category: Scorpion (TV 2014)
Genre: Addiction, Angst, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-31
Updated: 2017-04-07
Packaged: 2018-05-30 07:37:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 67
Words: 82,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6414769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flavato_Forever/pseuds/Flavato_Forever
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How Toby's and Happy's relationship develops -- and how Toby deals with his addiction. Quintis!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone! It's my first time writing a Scorpion fic, so comments/suggestions are welcome! This fic was inspired by DramaticTendency's amazing one-shot, Wrap Me Up In Your Addiction, which, if you haven't already seen, I would highly recommend.
> 
> As someone who has been affected by addiction (and has noticed a lot of, perhaps, less-than-realistic portrayals of addiction in media), I thought it would be interesting to write about Toby from that point of view. So that's where I'm starting from here. Hope you all enjoy it!

It had been exactly thirteen hours since he had promised Happy that he would never gamble again. He meant it, he really meant it, but he’d read enough about twelve-step programs to know that promises like that were rarely kept, especially when the promiser had his kind of background.

  
He’d gone thirteen hours without gambling before, sure. On missions, movie marathons, car trips. It wasn’t really that long of a time, honestly. The problem was the _never again_ part. The rest of his life stretched out in front of him like an eternally long desert road, the kind where, if you ran out of gas, you were as good as vulture food.

  
As soon as he and Happy left their rooftop powwow, he had said goodbye to the team and gone straight to his apartment, which he promptly ridded of all traces of gambling. He burned every scratch-off card he could find, threw out all his bookies’ contact info, withdrew from all his fantasy leagues. He acted quickly, in a fit of enthusiasm. It took him less time than he would have guessed, purging his life of all physical trace of his addiction.

  
When it was all finished, he sat on the sofa in his living room. His apartment was completely silent. It was around this time on Friday evenings when he would normally hike over to a casino, whichever one struck his fancy at the moment. There was the Horseshoe, across the street from the diner where Paige used to work; the liquor was cheap but the competition easy. Or the Ocean Downs, closer to Sylvester’s apartment, with the extra-cute dealers. Or Casino Magic, a favorite for nights when he was too tired to think; they only had slot machines.

  
He loved everything about casinos: the pervasive smell of cigar smoke, the women sporting low-cut dresses, even the guards staring daggers around the room. Of course, he especially loved the rush of every move, the adrenaline flooding his blood, a vestigial reaction from the time of hunting mammoths and outrunning saber-tooth tigers.

Toby wasn’t an idiot, despite what Happy would say on occasion; he knew their game. Casino owners pumped oxygen in to make the crowd feel more alive, blocked out the windows so you lost track of time, rang random, meaningless bells perpetually to make you feel like someone was winning at all times. But, even knowing this, casinos comforted him.

  
Now, he was left alone in the silence. He glanced around at his apartment, at the stacks of medical journals he didn’t have the energy to read, the TV he almost never watched unless one of his teams were playing. His eyes came to rest on his old landline. It was a relic, deep maroon with an old vinyl cord. Happy always made fun of him for it; he didn’t really know why he kept it around.

  
He picked up the handset and moved his thumb to hover over the numbers. He could call his mother, but there wasn’t a great chance the treatment center’s receptionist would patch him through to her unless he made up a family emergency. He didn’t even have the latest number for his dad; occasionally the old man would call from one hellhole motel or another, but if Toby ever tried to call back a few days later, he’d be gone.

  
He wanted so badly to talk to Happy, but he couldn’t bear to burden her with this. It occurred to him that there was really only one person he could call right now. His hand dialed the number shakily. Paige picked up on the third ring.

* * *

After momentary confusion, Paige had agreed to drop Ralph off with the woman across the hall and meet Toby for coffee. Now, she gazed at him with concern from across a pseudo-rustic table in a café neither of them particularly liked. Toby was staring intently into his cup. He took his coffee plain, unadulterated by cream or sugar. The lighting made his drink look almost purple.

  
“What’s on your mind?” Paige asks, after several minutes of silence.

  
“I promised Happy I’d never gamble again.”

  
Paige knits her brows. “And that’s… bad?”

  
“Not the promise. It’s just…”

  
“Keeping the promise,” Paige concludes, nodding.

  
Toby looks up at her.

  
“My dad was an alcoholic. I know the twelve steps by heart.”

  
The admission comes as a surprise, but it made sense. It was really a wonder Toby hadn’t suspected something sooner. The signs were all there: the overdeveloped sense of responsibility to others, the fear of emotional attachment, the difficulties with intimacy. Toby had written all of it off as a product of her broken relationship with Drew.

  
“Paige, I’m sorry.”

  
She waves her hand dismissively. “It’s been a long time since I lived with him. I still go to Al-Anon meetings every once in a while, though. I’m sure we could find a Gambler’s Anonymous meeting around here.”

  
Toby shakes his head. “I’m not really a twelve-step kind of guy.”

  
“I bet, a couple hours ago, you weren’t really an up-and-quit-gambling type of guy, either.”

  
Toby smiles slightly. It’s off-putting to Paige, seeing him this way. He was probably the most sociable – most _normal_ – of the whole team, barring herself, but he kept up his chipper front almost all the time. She’d almost never even heard him raise his voice in anger. And now here he was, sitting in front of her, looking lost and gloomy and small.

  
“Come on,” Paige says, standing up. “I think you need a change of scenery.”

  
Toby looks at her dubiously, but follows her out of the café.

  
The night is warm, like almost every other in southern California. Toby liked the heat, liked walking around without the need to bundle up in a million layers. But every so often he felt just slightly nostalgic for the bitter chill of New York winters that marked his childhood. There was something about sleeping with the windows open in the middle of February, underneath a pile of blankets, wrapped in an envelope of warmth, that he loved. Here, you open in the windows in the middle of a winter night and see half-naked teenagers meandering home.

  
He and Paige walk for about an hour, just wandering around the neighborhood. They talk about nothing, really, work and the weather and Ralph’s latest project. But after they make their way back to the parking lot, say their goodbyes, and Toby climbs in his car to go home, he realizes he didn’t think about gambling the entire time.

  
He checks the clock and does some quick addition. _Sixteen hours clean. The rest of my life to go._


	2. Chapter 2

Toby and Happy are sitting on the sofa in Toby’s apartment. The TV is playing some decade-old rerun, but neither of them is really watching.

 

Toby’s arm is wrapped around Happy’s shoulder. His hand has snaked its way under her shirt and his thumb is drawing absent-minded circles on her belly, just to the right of her navel. It isn’t an unusual gesture, and never one Happy objects to unless they are in public. Something about it tonight, though, right after their return from yet another international mission, with the fresh taste of almost-death and jetlag in her mouth, is making her head spin.

 

She realizes she has never done anything like that to him. She’d kissed him, sure, and done a lot more than that. But this is different: total mindless affection for affection’s sake. Toby does it all the time; he’ll kiss the top of her head as he passes, brush his hand against hers when they are working together. Even now, when she can tell he is lost in thought, he is touching her, absolutely oozing infatuation. And Happy – though she’d never admit it – kind of absolutely loved it. And that kind of absolutely terrified her.

 

Toby is completely oblivious to his girlfriend’s attempt to struggle through understanding her feelings for him. He is, yet again, besieged by the urge to gamble. It has been three weeks, and he is starting to get into a rhythm, but every so often he has a bad day. Right now, his brain is sending a constant stream of commands to turn anything, _anything,_ into a bet. _I bet this character dies before his son comes back. I bet there are at least two expired cartons of milk in the fridge. I bet I could beat the elevator to the bottom of floor of the building._

 

He has been hiding the extent of his suffering from Happy. She’d commented a couple times about him seeming off; he’d always dismiss it as his being tired. Now, he wants more than anything to talk to her, to tell her what he is feeling, but he can’t bear to burden her with the thought that she is the cause of it all.

 

And so they sit in silence.

 

Happy eventually gets the idea to try to show some affection, and wrestles with herself for a solid thirty minutes on the sofa, trying to come up with a natural way to do so. Before she can figure it out, though, Toby leans over, kisses her neck softly, and whispers a suggestion to move to the bedroom. They do, and before long both of their minds are, at least temporarily, very occupied.

* * *

 As Happy falls asleep, she reaches out and grabs Toby’s hand, making him smile. He is very aware that, for all his proclamations of love, she has never outright said she loves him back. He is pretty secure in his conviction that it has more to do with her lack of childhood emotional connection than her feelings for him, but his stomach still flutters in delight every time she made such rare, small, intimate gestures.

 

When Happy’s breathing slows enough for Toby to be sure she is asleep, he scoots over until his body is right up against hers and wraps his arms around her. He needs to feel her, be close to her, remember why he was giving up his lifelong pastime. On nights like this one, she is the only thing that can ground him.

 

She doesn’t stay at his place very often. Normally, once they are finished for the night, she’d shower quickly and then run home, no matter how late it is. Toby tries (often unsuccessfully) not to dig into the pathology of actions like that. But lately, she has been sleeping here more often. Three days ago, she’d bought a second toothbrush and left it here, along with two changes of clothes. Toby had said nothing, attempting to heed her warning about hugging the bunny too tightly, but inside he was elated.

 

He thinks about that now, that toothbrush sitting in the bathroom across the hall. He imagines a world where he talks to Happy about the havoc his lack of gambling is wreaking on his mind, where Happy knew what a fight this is for him. He envisions her on his one-year-clean anniversary, throwing him a party. It wouldn’t really be a party; that wasn’t Happy’s style. But, in this world, she’d do something for him, he is sure. Maybe make him some sort of mechanical toy that he would adore, or hang a big banner in his apartment that said _Congratulations_! in very ostentatious letters.

 

Toby rolls out of bed and walks into his kitchen, grabbing his phone off the hall table as he goes. He spends five minutes Googling a few things, and then grabs a pen and pad of paper from the drawer to the left of the sink. He writes down an address and time, and then puts everything away.

 

He doesn’t need to write any of it down. He’s perfectly capable of remembering two lines of information. But the action is therapeutic somehow. It’s also permanent. He’s now made a commitment, if only to himself, only to a cheap pad of paper in the dim light of his tiny apartment’s kitchen, to go a Gambler’s Anonymous meeting the following evening.

 

When he gets back in bed, Happy is half-awake and asks if everything is okay. “Of course,” he murmurs, brushing her hair out of her face. She smiles slightly and then reaches for his hand. He takes it, and, a minute later, when she is asleep again, he repeats “Of course.”


	3. Chapter 3

Toby stands in front of a folding table, preparing his coffee in a small Styrofoam cup. He had spent the last hour in the basement of a church, seated in a circle full of other addicts. He had listened to people share stories about their addictions, stories that mirrored his own darkest hours. He had stood up, held hands with those next to him, and recited the serenity prayer. And now he was mingling.

  
Or, at least, he was supposed to be mingling. He’d entertained himself throughout the meeting by figuring out who was whose sponsor – when everyone got up, he decided that his guesses were almost all accurate – but had failed to actually look for someone to talk to himself. He had stood alone for a moment, listening to the others talk, and then settled on meandering over to the coffee table.

  
The infamous coffee table. It was a product of AA, the granddaddy of all twelve-step programs. Recovering alcoholics needed something liquid to latch onto, and, somewhere in the long history of addiction pathology and treatment, the burden had fallen on coffee. If the coffee wasn’t present at an AA meeting, a riot would break out, or so he’d heard. The drink wasn’t as great a substitute for gambling, but it did provide something to keep his hands busy.  
“Is this your first meeting?”

  
He turns to see a tall woman standing next to him. She was dressed better than most people at the meeting – better than him, in his standard plain tee shirt and jeans. He pegged her as the meeting’s official welcome committee.

  
“Yeah. It’s a nice…” He looks around. “Basement.”

  
She laughs, apparently sincerely. “Yeah, the church basement. Cliché, isn’t it? I’m Christine.” She sticks out her hand, and Toby shakes it.

  
“Toby.” He can’t really say why he doesn’t give his full title, _Dr. Tobias M. Curtis_ , as he normally would. It wasn’t the program’s MO, of course; they were first-name-only, staying true to the _anonymous_ part of their label. But, if you had asked him an hour ago, he would have said he didn’t care about their traditions.

  
“Nice to meet you, Toby. And if you don’t mind my asking, when was the last time you gambled?”

  
“Twenty-two days ago, now, give or take.” He tries to play it off like he doesn’t count the hours since his last poker game at least five times a day.

  
“Congratulations. I guess you’ve earned this, then, haven’t you?” She pulls a small white coin out of her purse and gives it to him. He turns it around in his hands. It’s a sobriety chip; he’s seen them before. The front had a simple triangular design with a “24” in the center. On the back, the serenity prayer was printed in plain text. It almost looked like a poker chip.

  
“The twenty-four-hour chip,” he says quietly. Christine nods. He hadn’t thought about this part, when he was mulling over the idea of coming to a meeting, hadn’t realized he would go home with a physical keepsake.

  
They stand there in silence for a moment, before Christine continues.

  
“Is this your first time? Trying to quit?”

  
“Yeah.”

  
“I’m guessing you don’t have a sponsor?”

  
Toby shakes his head, seeing where she is going. She stops there, though, not asking the question. Toby knows what she is doing: he has to initiate it. _It works if you work it_.

  
“Would you be my sponsor?”

  
“Of course.”

  
They exchange phone numbers and Christine gives him a list of all the meetings in the area. She reminds him of the recommendation that he start with a meeting every day for the first ninety days. He scoffs slightly, knowing he’s bound to get called off to some mission within the week that will make that impossible, but they make plans to go to a meeting together the next day, anyway.

* * *

 When Toby gets back to his apartment, he flips the coin up in the air and catches it a few times, trying to decide what to do with it. Eventually, he pulls the decorative bowl Paige had gotten him for his birthday – _to spice up your apartment_ – out of the lazy Susan in his kitchen and puts the chip inside. He then goes to his bedroom and puts the bowl on the shelf in his closet, behind the dress shoes he never wears.

  
When he’s finished, he calls Happy. A few hours earlier he had skirted around explaining why he was refusing her offer to go get dinner at Kovalsky’s together, and he could tell it had confused her.

  
Now, she was at home, having just showered. She was happy when she saw that he was calling; she had been worried about him. She’d noticed him acting odd lately, moping around, getting lost in thought more often than usual. She couldn’t shake the feeling that it had something to do with her.

  
They ended up talking for thirty minutes about Happy’s latest project, some sort of machine for Walter’s birthday. Toby was too tired to understand half of what Happy was talking about, and Happy was too worried to get excited about the explanation, but both of them liked hearing the other’s voice.

  
When they finish talking, Toby quips _Love you_ and then hangs up, not expecting Happy to say it back. It was how they almost always end their phone calls, but tonight it strikes Happy. She wonders what would have happened if he hadn’t hung up, if he had let his words sit there for a moment. She thinks that, had he done that, she might have whispered _I love you, too_.


	4. Chapter 4

Paige set a mug of tea down on the desk, next to where Happy was screwing some contraption together. The mechanic eyed her questioningly.

  
“I thought you looked like you could use something to drink.”

  
“Thank you,” Happy said, monotone, before going back to her work.

  
Paige sat down on the stool across from Happy. “Hey, is everything okay?”

  
“Yeah, why wouldn’t it be?” she responded without looking up.

  
“You seem a little… off today.”

  
That made Happy pause. It was exactly what she had said to Toby the night before, when he had zoned out in the middle of a conversation over dinner.

  
If she was being truthful, Happy was feeling off. For the past four weeks, Toby hadn’t been himself. He had started leaving the room to take phone calls, making lame excuses for being too busy to hang out. Happy couldn’t decide what annoyed her more: his odd behavior, or the fact that it was making her act like a clingy schoolgirl as she tried to figure out its cause.

  
She wouldn’t even admit it to herself, but she was worried she had pushed him away. He’d fawned over her for years, and she had berated him for it, and when she’d finally said yes the relationship was totally on her terms. They had barely been dating for a month when she’d forced him to stop gambling, under threat of having to watch her entirely break down on the roof.

  
No one else was in the garage at the moment. Sly and Cabe had gone home for the night, and Walter had offered to take Ralph to see some action movie. Toby had left alone, as he was doing more and more lately. She’d asked if he wanted to go see the movie with Walter and Ralph, but he said he wasn’t feeling up to it. He’d told her he would stop by her place in a few hours, if she wanted, and she’d agreed. She couldn’t help but wonder what he would do in that time.

  
She didn’t really want to talk to Paige about any of this, but all the feelings that had been consuming her when she was lying alone in her bed were coming up, and she found herself holding back tears.

  
“Happy? What’s wrong?”

  
“I think Toby’s cheating on me.”

  
She didn’t know where it came from. The thought had never occurred to her before, but now that the words were out, she realized she truly believed them. Paige’s eyes widened.

  
“Cheating on you? Why do you think that?”

  
Happy explained Toby’s evasive behavior. “What if that’s where he goes every night when he leaves early?”

  
“Happy, I really don’t think-”

  
Happy jumped up, grabbing her bag. Her insecurities had calmed enough for her to be mortified at her display of emotion. A lust for action had taken hold of her, in an effort to take back her vulnerability. She started walking towards the door.

  
“Happy, where are you going?”

  
“I’m going to find him.”

  
“Toby? You don’t know where he is.” Paige followed her.

  
“I may not be a hacking genius, but I know how to triangulate a cell phone.”

* * *

 Paige objected to the premise of spying on her friend, but she was worried about what Happy might do if she was alone and found Toby doing some less-than-wholesome extracurricular activities. She couldn’t believe Toby would cheat on Happy, but she’d spent enough time around addicts to know what relapse behavior looked like.

  
They traced his phone to a diner a couple miles from the garage. Probably not a poker hotspot, but the location did nothing to abate Happy’s suspicions of another woman.

  
The diner had huge glass windows along every wall, allowing the two women to sit in Happy’s truck outside while looking for Toby. It didn’t take long to find him; he was seated right by the front door, across from an attractive woman that neither Paige nor Happy recognized.

  
Paige saw Happy grinding her teeth in anger, and placed one hand over hers.

  
“They’re probably just friends.”

  
“What are the odds Toby has friends that we don’t know about?”

  
Paige had nothing to say to that.

  
They sat in the truck for about ten minutes before Toby got up. He hugged the woman, and then walked outside to his car. Paige thought for a moment that Happy might jump out and strangle him on the spot, but she just ducked behind the dashboard, out of sight. Paige followed suit.

  
They both stayed still for a minute after they heard Toby drive away, and then Happy opened her door.

  
“What are you doing?” Paige asked.

  
Happy ignored her and started to walk determinedly towards the diner door. Paige tried to grab her arm, but she shook loose.

  
They both reached the table, where the woman still sat, at the same time. She was typing something on her phone, but looked up when she saw Happy’s shadow come over her.

  
“Hello, can I help you?”

  
“Yes. I’d like to know what you were doing with that man.” Happy pointed in the vague direction of where Toby’s car had been moments before.

  
“I’m sorry, who are you?”

  
“I’m his girlfriend.”

  
The woman’s face lit up in recognition. “You must be Happy!” She stood up and wrapped Happy, who was too shocked to protest, in a hug. “Toby has told me so much about you.”

  
“He talks about his girlfriend with the woman he’s sleeping with?”

  
The woman cocks her head in confusion. “What? No, I’m not sleeping with him.” She says it almost laughingly.

  
Happy’s brow knits. “So he’s not cheating on me?”

  
“Cheating on you? Of course not. He loves you so much – you’re all he ever talks about.”

  
“Then who the hell are you?”

  
“Happy,” Paige muttered, touching her shoulder, but the woman replied without skipping a beat.

  
“I’m Christine. I’m his sponsor.”


	5. Chapter 5

Happy knocked angrily on Toby’s apartment door, something between rage and shame boiling in her blood. She’d stormed out of the diner as soon as she’d registered what the implications of _sponsor_ were: Toby was going to Gamblers’ Anonymous meetings and he hadn’t told her.

  
Paige had tried to calm her down, but she had refused to listen. She’d simply said that she was going to Toby’s place and asked angrily if Paige wanted to come, to which the other woman had shaken her head.

  
Toby answered the door seconds after her knock. He was dressed as if he were going out – hat on, shoes tied, bag over his shoulder. It was only then that Happy remembered their plans for the evening.

  
“Hey, Happy, I was just coming over to-” Toby started, before seeing the anger in his girlfriend’s eyes. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

  
Happy pushed past him, into his living room, and he shut the door behind her.

  
“I met Christine tonight.”

  
“Christine?”

  
“Your sponsor, moron.”

  
Toby’s eyes narrowed in confusion. “How did you meet Christine?”

  
“I followed you to the diner.”

  
“What? Why?”

  
“Why didn’t you tell me you were going to Gambler’s Anonymous meetings?” Happy was barely aware that she was shouting.

  
Toby bit his lip. He hadn’t expected to reveal his meetings to Happy this way, though he had been planning on telling her, at some point down the road. Still, he didn’t really understand her anger.

  
“I didn’t want to burden you.”

  
“Burden me? I’m your girlfriend. We’re supposed to talk about stuff like this.”

  
_Yes, because you just_ love _talking about stuff like this_. Toby was surprised at the malice that came up with that thought, but he held his tongue.

  
“Happy, please.” He reaches out to put a hand on her shoulder, but she shrugs it off.

  
“I thought you were _cheating_ on me. Do you even understand how that felt at all?”

  
“Cheating on you? Happy, I would never do that.”

  
“How should I have known that? You started acting all evasive. You never wanted to hang out. You leave work early every day-”

  
“To go to meetings! I’ve gone to a meeting every day since I started. You’re supposed to go a meeting every day for the first ninety days.”

  
“Why didn’t you just tell me that? Why’d you leave me wondering what the hell was going on?”

  
“I had no idea you thought anything was going on. You never asked.”

  
“Don’t you dare make this my fault.”

  
“I wasn’t trying to make it your fault.”

  
“I would have been there. I would have come to meetings with you.”

  
Toby could see Happy begin to calm down, to regret what she had said. But for some reason, as her anger dissipated, antagonism boiled up in his stomach.

  
“Would you have? Would you have wanted to?”

  
The venom in his voice shocked them both.

  
“Of course.”

  
“You know what, Happy? This isn’t about me not telling you I was going to meetings. This is about you.”

  
“What the hell are you talking about?”

  
“You _care_ about me, Happy. And you won’t admit it. You thought that I always told you everything, and you know you _don’t_ tell me everything. And when you realized I kept something from you, you learned how much it hurt. And it scared you, because you’re doing the exact same thing to me.”

  
From the wounded look on Happy’s face, he knew what he said was true. She didn’t say anything for a moment, and he was about to stutter an apology, to pull her into his arms and beg her to forget everything he said, but before he had a chance she turned around and ran out the door.

  
He ran after her, but by the time he got out of her apartment she had already disappeared down the hall. He heard her car start outside when he reached the stairwell, and decided not to follow her. He’d never catch up to her, anyway.

  
He went back into his apartment, sat down on his sofa, and started to cry.

* * *

 The next morning, Toby arrived to the garage first. After Happy left, he had tossed and turned for hours before giving up on sleep. Around three am, he had called Happy, but either her cell phone was off or she was ignoring him – his bet was on the latter. He had spent the rest of the morning planning his apology speech.

  
He watched the rest of the team filter in: Walter came down a few minutes after Toby sat down; Sly came in with Cabe, as Thursdays were the agent’s day for picking him up; Ralph and Paige rolled up twenty minutes before school, like always.

  
But Happy was nowhere to be found.

  
As soon as Paige had said hello to everyone, she took Toby off into the kitchen to ask him about Happy’s confrontation. He remained cryptic, but said that they had fought and Happy had run off and he hadn’t heard from her since.

  
By ten o’clock, there was still no word from Happy. Toby thought she might be off somewhere blowing off steam, but he was still concerned, so his ears pricked up when Walter’s phone rang.

  
“Hello?... Yes, this is Walter O’Brian… Yes, Happy Quinn works for me… I see… Okay, I will be there as soon as I can.”

  
Everyone was now watching Walter. He hung up and glanced around the room.

  
“It seems that, as Happy never registered an emergency contact with the DMV, the standard operating procedure is to call her employer in case of emergency.”

  
“Emergency? What emergency?” Toby asked, voice shaking.

  
“Last night, Happy was in a car accident. She’s in the hospital now.”


	6. Chapter 6

The team arrived at the hospital seven minutes later and poured out from Cabe’s SUV in a panic. Walter and Toby got to the front desk first and frantically screamed at the nurse stationed there. It took a minute for the hospital staff to understand all the yelling, but once they did, a heavy-set doctor and a police officer was called in from an adjacent room. The doctor introduced himself as Dr. Black.

  
“Where’s Happy? Is she okay?” Toby could hear the terror in his voice.

  
The doctor rattled off a pile of medical jargon that Toby’s well-trained ear immediately translated into understandable vernacular. _Broken ribs, punctured lung, burst spleen, severely damaged liver and stomach, massive internal bleeding, broken femur_. She was out of surgery and most of her significant injuries were under control, but she was still touch-and-go and wouldn’t be considered stable until she had survived another six hours or so.

  
The police officer, Officer King, then took over. He explained the basics of the crash: they’d found her unconscious, her truck smashed against a tree. She had been out on some windy roads, nowhere near her apartment, or any other form of civilization, for that matter. The officer was there to make sure Happy’s blood was tested for any trace of alcohol or drugs, which it had been – she was perfectly sober.

  
Toby remembered a study he had read a few years prior about the effects of extreme emotion on driving. Driving while furious was just as dangerous as driving while drunk. A knot began to grow in his throat.

  
“Can we see her?” Paige cut in.

  
“Ms. Quinn is currently unconscious, thanks to the surgical anesthesia and morphine we’ve given her,” Dr. Black answered, “and probably wouldn’t be up for hours.”

  
_Assuming she doesn’t die first_ , Toby finished mentally.

  
“You’re all welcome to stay in the waiting room. A nurse can come and give you updates as we have them.”

  
At that, the doctor and officer left, and the team dejectedly ordered themselves among the chairs in the waiting room. If Toby had been paying attention, he would have noticed Walter’s hand slide over into Paige’s, might have even, under different circumstances, made some witty comment about it, but he was busy allowing self-hate to grow inside of him.

  
Happy was on the edge of death. He wasn’t a statistician of Sylvester’s merit, but he knew bodies, knew the breadth of what they could go through. He put Happy’s chance of survival at less than a third.

  
_I shouldn’t have let her go. I knew that she drives too fast, that she’d drive even faster in her state of mind. I should have chased after her. I should have protected her._

  
The hospital waiting room was abuzz with activity. Injured parties stumbled in, bandaged parties stumbled out. Doctors and nurses walked around self-importantly. Toby imagined himself as one of them, wearing pastel scrubs and giving pretentious diagnoses.

  
It was a good hospital. Clean, well-respected, with a high success rate. Toby knew this. But he had heard the horror stories in med school: doctor’s, hyped up on a morphine because it was impossible to kick an addiction when you worked hundred-hour weeks, amputating the wrong limbs, nicking vital arteries that could have easily been left alone, maiming or killing their patients almost instantly with petty mistakes. Dr. Black hadn’t given off any suspicious markers, but Toby knew there would have been a whole team of people in the surgery room. More than anything, he wanted to sit them all down, interrogate them, make sure that they had done everything within their earthly power to save Happy.

  
Someone dropped a clipboard, creating a loud thud to bring him out of his masochistic reverie. He glanced around at the team and saw Paige with her hands pressed together in front of her chest. He thought for a moment she was cracking her knuckles, but then he realized she was praying.

  
There was one time in his life, one singular time, when he had prayed. He had asked God to save Happy from the whiteout in the South Pole. He had never believed in that higher-power stuff; his grandmother had dragged him to church a few times, but after she died he’d never gone back.

  
And yet he found himself pressing his hands together and mouthing a desperate plea. _Please, God. Please. Let her be okay._

* * *

 Seven hours and twenty minutes passed by with Toby’s eyes shooting to the clock every thirty seconds. He counted the floor tiles (ninety-seven), the number of patients entering (forty-two) and leaving (thirty-nine), and the number of times the phone at the front desk ran (sixty-six). He drank three cups of coffee, all brought by Cabe from the cafeteria down the hall. And he prayed.

  
Then a nurse approached their group. “Are you all here with Happy Quinn?”

  
Everyone jerked alert. “Yes,” Walter said steadily.

  
“I’m happy to tell you that it looks like she is going to pull through. She’s still knocked out, but should be up in twenty minutes or so.”

  
They all breathed a collective sigh of relief. Toby felt tears welling up in his eyes.

  
“Can we see her?”

  
“Because of the extent of her injuries, we suggest only one person in the room at this time.”

  
Everyone looked to Toby. _They don’t know_ , he thought. _They don’t know that it’s my fault she’s here._

  
Before he could say anything, Walter was pushing him forward, and the nurse was leading him to an elevator.

  
“Poor girl, really went through the ringer. Are you her husband?”

  
“Boyfriend,” Toby found himself saying.

  
“She’ll probably have to stay here for another two nights or so, and then she’ll need round-the-clock care for another few weeks.”

  
In any other state of mind, Toby would have laughed at the thought of Happy needing someone to take care of her.

  
The nurse then stopped walking, and Toby realized they had reached Happy’s room.

  
The room was small, maybe nine by twelve feet, with a single hospital bed in it, flanked by a million machines. A small mound – _Happy_ – was on the bed. Wires and tubes came out from everywhere: her wrist, her fingers, her chest. Her left leg was totally encased in a massive cast. Her hair was tousled, and there was still a bit of dried blood on her nostrils.

  
Toby automatically looked to the monitor displayed her vital signs. Her heart rate was there, small little blips on a flat green line.

  
“I’ll leave you two alone,” the nurse said quietly, motioning to a chair next to the bed.

  
When she left the room, Toby collapsed on the chair, not able to take his eyes off Happy. He whispered one last prayer: _thank you._


	7. Chapter 7

Exactly fourteen minutes later, Happy opened her eyes and blinked groggily. Toby wanted to say something, anything, an apology or a proclamation of love or _something,_ but he couldn’t find any words.

  
Her eyes moved lazily around the room before coming to rest on him.

  
“Hey doc,” Happy said, her voice soft and gravelly.

  
“Hey, Happy, hey.” Toby gently placed one hand on her forehead and the other on her arm, careful to avoid the IV needle there. “How are you feeling?”

  
“Remember... the other day… when you were… so freaked out… because I told you… I hadn’t been to the doctor… in years?” The words came out slowly; she kept having to pause to catch her breath. “And you… were going on and on about… all the vaccines I’d missed… and everything?”

  
“Yeah, yeah, I remember.”

  
“Well,” she said, smiling slightly, “look… where we are now.”

  
Toby couldn’t help but laugh.

  
He pushed some of her hair out of her face. “Does it hurt, sweetie?”

  
“No. I can’t feel… anything.” She licked her lips. “How long was… I out?”

  
“You got here sometime late last night. It’s six now, so you were probably unconscious for a little over eighteen hours.”

  
She nodded.

  
Toby was about to pull back the apology speech he had planned from the morning – which felt like a lifetime ago – but Happy kept talking.

  
“Where is everyone?”

  
“They’re all downstairs, waiting to hear how you’re doing.”

  
“Can I… see them?”

  
“Of course. Only one person at a time though. Doctor’s orders.”

  
Happy smiled at that. “You’re a doctor, you know that?”

  
He kissed her forehead lightly. “I am, sweetheart. And I think you’re still hyped up on that morphine.”

* * *

 Every member of the team spent a few minutes with Happy, but no one wanted to tire her out. Toby stood by the door to the room protectively. Someone – probably Paige – had had the wherewithal to call Happy’s dad when she woke up, and he showed up to check on her as well, but, after Happy insisted she was fine, he didn’t stay long. Toby could tell he didn’t feel comfortable in the hospital.

  
As he was leaving, he pulled Toby aside.

  
“Hey, son, I’m glad you’re here. It’s nice to know someone with some medical knowledge is looking out for her.”

  
A wave of guilt hit Toby so hard he couldn’t do anything but nod.

  
When everyone was content in knowing that Happy was okay, they all headed home, besides Toby, who wanted to stay the night. Happy had become gradually less loopy. By the time every else left, Toby decided she was coherent enough for him to apologize.

  
“Happy,” he started.

  
“Yeah?”

  
“How much do you remember from last night?”

  
She frowned slightly. Her eyes moved to focus on the cast on her leg as she struggled to bring the memories back.

  
“I left your apartment. And I was driving… so fast.”

  
Toby realized she thought he was asking about the crash. He wondered for a second if she had forgotten their argument, but then she continued.

  
“I was… so angry at you. And I went up to… those hills near the beach… that Megan used to like. And… that’s all I remember. What happened?” She leaned forward slightly, eyes wide, as she realized something. “Did anyone else get hurt?”

  
Toby drew small circles on her arm with his thumb, trying to calm her.

  
“No, sweetie, no. You hit a tree.”

  
She leaned back, looking relieved.

  
“The police said you had to be going at least a hundred miles an hour. You, my friend, are one lucky girl.”

  
Her nose wrinkled at his calling her a girl. “I broke my leg?” She motioned to her cast.

  
“Yes.”

  
“Is that all?”

  
Toby shook his head. “No, honey.” He smoothed her hair. “You broke a few ribs, one of which punctured your lung. That’s why you have these.” He pointed to the tube the doctors had inserted in her back, which snaked around to a suction pump next to her bed, as well as her nasal cannula. “The one in your back is sucking the air out of your pleural cavity. And the one in your nose gives you some extra oxygen because your lungs aren’t at a hundred percent. Your spleen also burst, so they had to remove that. There’ll be some bandages right around there.” His hand hovers over her upper left side, just under her armpit, careful not to touch anything. “There was also some stomach and liver damage, which means you’ll most likely be on an all-liquid diet for a while. Lucky for you, though, the stomach and liver are both quite resilient organs.”

  
“So, basically, you’re telling me… I’m going to have some… pretty wicked scars when I’m all healed up.”

  
“Exactly,” he said, smiling, before kissing her forehead again.

  
They sit in silence for a while, Toby affectionately touching Happy in any way he can that won’t mess with the labyrinth of medical machinery engulfing her. He listened to her breathing. Occasionally, her breath would catch in her throat, and she’d have to take gasp of air to compensate. When that happened, he’d squeeze her hand gently.

  
Toby had almost built up enough courage to start his apology when Happy’s croaky voice broke the silence.

  
“Hey doc?”

  
“Yes, sweetheart?”

  
“I’m sorry. Last night… I overreacted.”

  
Toby was so shocked that it took him a moment to find words.

  
“What?”

  
“I’m sorry. You were right… I was mad at… myself, not you.”

  
“Wait, wait, Happy. You’re lying in a hospital, tubes coming out of everywhere, barely awake from a car crash that almost killed you. You don’t get to apologize. It was _my_ fault. I shouldn’t have said what I said. It was wrong of me-”

  
“Toby,” she interrupted. “Please shut up. I’m… trying really hard… here. There is… a lot of… morphine in my head… right now, so this isn’t… easy, and I’d appreciate it if… you’d let me finish.”

  
Toby pressed his lips together and nodded.

  
“I spent the last… hour or so… knowing that I almost died. And… in light of that… I’d like to say… that I’m still mad that… you didn’t tell me about your meetings… But I’m sorry that… I don’t talk to you… as much as I should… I really like you and… I don’t really know… what to do with that. But… I want you to know… that I really, really care about you.”

  
When she was finished, she closed her eyes and tried to catch her breath, not daring to look at Toby.

  
“Happy, I… I can only guess how hard it was for you to say that. Thank you.”

  
Happy, brain still fogged by the narcotics, was only vaguely aware of the way her outpour of emotion made her skin crawl with discomfort.

  
“Don’t you have... a meeting to go to... Mr. Ninety Days?”

  
“I think they’ll let it slide if I miss one.”

  
“No, you should go.” Happy’s heart was still a little raw from her speech, and some more emotional truth seeped out. “I don’t want to... keep you from doing... what you need to do.”

  
Toby placed his hand on her cheek. “I’ll tell you what. They have phone meetings all the time. How about I call one here?”

  
“Can you put it… on speaker?”

  
He nodded. By then, it was two minutes until seven, when one of the phone meetings Christine always raved about started. He called the meeting on his cell phone, and placed it on Happy’s bedside table.

  
The two of them sat there, both of Toby’s hands around Happy’s needle-free one, listening to addicts tell their stories, for an hour. When the meeting concluded, elevator music took over the line. Neither Happy nor Toby spoke until a nurse came in, asking about Happy’s pain level.

  
“My leg is kind of… throbbing.”

  
The nurse checked something on a clipboard. “It looks like it’s about time for another dose of morphine. This will put you to sleep pretty quick, okay, honey?”

  
Happy nodded. The nurse injected a small vile of clear liquid into Happy’s IV bag and then stepped out.

  
Happy and Toby talked quietly until it became clear that Happy was fading. Toby promised to be sitting right where he was when she woke up. Right before she fell asleep, Happy grasped Toby’s hand.

  
“Hey doc?”

  
“Yeah?”

  
In her almost-sleep, she let one last truth slip out: “I love you.”


	8. Chapter 8

Happy had to stay in the hospital for four more nights while her lung healed. Toby was there almost all the time, other than a few trips to his apartment to shower and get fresh clothes. The rest of the team also made frequent stops to see the wounded mechanic. Sylvester brought his comics to read aloud to Happy, which lead to some interesting discussions about the physics of superpowers. Paige always came with fresh flowers to brighten the dreary hospital room. Ralph would sometimes come with her, and he and Happy would quickly fall into in-depth analyses of his robotics assignments. Walter and Cabe often came together and would try, mostly unsuccessfully, to interest Happy in card games.

  
One day, Toby commented on her lack of interest after Walter and Cabe had left, and Happy shrugged. “I used to play cards a lot in foster care. They bring up some not-so-great memories.”

  
When the two were alone together, Toby would read medical journals aloud and translate them into colloquial terms for Happy. Even hearing the simplified version, she still didn’t understand most of the supposedly-huge scientific advancements described in the articles, but she enjoyed watching those long-dusty gears turn in her boyfriend’s head as he brought back vocabulary he hadn’t used in decade and a half.

  
When it was time for Happy to go home, Cabe offered his car for transport, as it had the roomiest back seats of any of team member’s. It was a process moving Happy from her room to the car; her leg had to be propped up in front of her, and her recent surgical scars made any sort of twisting painful. But the hospital staff cleared the traffic through the hallways, and Toby lifted her deftly from her wheelchair to the car, making them both grateful for her small stature.

  
The ride home was uneventful. Cabe drove, and Paige insisted on coming and sitting in the passenger seat for moral support. Toby sat in the back with Happy, making sure the pillows under her leg didn’t shift in transit. Walter and Sylvester were waiting at Happy’s apartment. They had stocked her fridge with liquid-diet-friendly foods and rearranged her furniture enough for the wheelchair to be able to pass through each room.  
Once Happy was safely settled on her living room sofa, Paige, Sylvester, Walter, and Cabe all left to let her rest. Toby stayed, uncomplainingly taking the first shift of round-the-clock care that Dr. Black had ordered.

  
When the rest of the team was gone, Toby sat down next to Happy.

  
“Do you need anything?”

  
“A shot of whiskey would be nice.”

  
Toby shook his head as he stroked her hair. “Sorry, no can do.”

  
She looked up at him, surprised that he would deny her request.

  
“Happy, you’re currently rocking a very-delicately-mixed cocktail of narcotics, antibiotics, and immunosuppressants. You don’t have to have an MD to realize that adding alcohol to that mix is not a good idea.”

  
She pursed her lips in annoyance. Thanks to the steering wheel having smashed into her abdomen, almost crushing her stomach, she could only eat a select few solids, mostly jello and fruit cups. So even though, logically, what Toby was saying made sense – and probably should have occurred to her earlier – alcohol also being off the table for the foreseeable future was exceptionally inconvenient.

  
Toby put on a mindless action movie and wrapped his arm around Happy, who leaned into him. She had to make sure to bend her hip and opposed to twist her back, or else the wound on her left side would start to ache. But she was, for the first time in a long time, completely unapologetic about wanting to cuddle with her boyfriend. It was oddly liberating.

  
They watched spy drama after spy drama, pausing only for a laughable dinner of milk, peanut butter, and a pain pill. Eventually, Happy’s eyelids grew heavy and she let Toby help her to her bedroom.

  
Once she was lying in her bed, all tucked into her blankets, Toby sat down in the chair Walter had brought in from her living room.

  
“How are you feeling?”

  
“Fine,” she said, but her voice was tight enough for Toby to realize she was in pain.

  
“What’s hurting?”

  
“My leg. It’s throbbing again.”

  
Toby placed his hand on forehead. “I’m so sorry, love. Your last oxycodone was three hours ago. You can’t have any more for at least another hour.”

  
Happy nodded without complaint, but Toby saw her hands clench with discomfort. His heart ached for her.

  
“Hey, I think I know just the thing to get your mind off of this.”

  
“If you suggest another jello cup, so help me God.”

  
“No, no, don’t worry, I don’t have any more jello cups. I do, however, have a great story about little baby teenager Toby.”

  
Happy snorted, but told him to go ahead. She didn’t get many stories about Toby’s childhood; she knew many of them weren’t the kind of thing you told to a girlfriend unless you wanted her to take off running. She was more intrigued than she cared to admit.

  
Toby started with the story about the time he almost burned his college science building down with a very creative (and, apparently, very flammable) physics project. When he saw how it made Happy laugh, he went on to talk about the time he snuck into the college library after hours on a dare and then had to hide in the heating vent for forty minutes while campus security tore the place apart looking for the intruder. He had a plethora of these stories, silly things he had done in college – a testament to his lack of a frontal lobe, being a solid five years younger than every one of his classmates.

  
Happy’s lung still wasn’t up to belly-ache-style laughing, but the stories made her chuckle as much as her condition would allow. Before she knew it, an hour had passed, and Toby was giving her another oxycodone and a glass of water.

  
She took the pill, and fell asleep soon after, still tickled about the image of fifteen-year-old Toby stuffed into a heating vent.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There may be some less-than-accurate medical information in this chapter. I did my best to find out what I could on Google, but many apologies if there are some messed up injury-healing timelines or anything of that nature.

The next morning, when Happy woke up, she insisted on washing her hair, which had turned into a matted mess during her stay in the hospital. Showering was a production, though, seeing as she had to keep her cast dry and could barely stand without assistance.

  
“Can you call Paige to ask her if she can come help?” she asked Toby.

  
“Sorry, honey, the rest of the team is in Oregon on that Watts case, remember? They won’t be home until tomorrow at the earliest.”

  
Happy grunted slightly in displeasure.

  
“Happy,” Toby said, rubbing her back softly, “I can wash your hair for you, if you want.”

  
She looked at him blankly. It hadn’t even occurred to her to ask him to do it. She’d washed another person’s hair once before, at the sixth foster home she went to. Her roommate had broken her hand and asked Happy to help her shower. The act was somehow intensely intimate; they two girls had almost magically become best friends for three weeks, until Happy was relocated.

  
Toby and Happy had showered together before, of course, under very different circumstances, but there was something feminine about washing hair, in Happy’s mind, which is why she had immediately thought of Paige. That didn’t really make sense, though, considering the fact that Toby presumably washed his hair all the time.

  
Neither Happy nor Toby had mentioned her saying that she loved him in the hospital, and she hadn’t said it since. But, for some reason, Happy was sure that Toby would not have offered to wash her hair if she hadn’t said it.

  
“Okay,” she said softly after a minute of silence.

  
Toby wrapped her cast carefully in plastic wrap to keep it dry, and then helped her into the bathroom. A day before Happy came home, Cabe had brought over a shower chair that his mother used before she died, which Happy sat on. Toby gently took off her clothes, folded them neatly, and placed them on the counter. Happy sat naked, feeling exceptionally exposed under the harsh fluorescent lights that hung over her vanity.

  
Toby ran the water in the bathtub faucet first, finding the perfect temperature before turning on the shower. The water hitting Happy’s skin was like a holy experience; she could feel the grime of four nights in a hospital coming off and winding down her drain.

  
She watched him as he poured a dime-sized blob of shampoo into his hand and started to rub it gently onto her scalp. He was focused on his work, so he didn’t notice her examining his face. He hadn’t shaved in a few days; his stubble was longer than normal. He looked tired.

  
His hands felt amazing on her scalp and, before long, she was lost in the pseudo-massage. When the shampoo was spread everywhere, he brought the detachable showerhead down to inches above Happy’s hair and guided the suds off her head, making sure none got into her eyes. When he was sure there was no shampoo left, he gently rubbed conditioner down the length of her hair. After that, he sat on the edge of the bathtub, letting the conditioner set for a few minutes.

  
Happy almost said _Did you got to beauty school, doc?_ but found herself not wishing to ruin the moment with sarcasm. Instead, she reached out a grabbed Toby’s hand, which was slightly oily from the conditioner, and listened to the hum of the shower.

  
Once the conditioner had set, Toby rinsed it out, then turned off the shower and gave Happy a towel to try off with. He brought her a pair of sweatpants and a tee shirt from her bedroom, let her get dressed, and then helped her into her living room. At her request, he brushed her hair out for her as well, as she couldn’t comfortably lift either arm over her head.

  
“Thank you,” Happy murmured when he finished. He kissed the top of her head.

  
“Of course.”

  
She ate breakfast – orange juice, yogurt, and a few pills – and then the pair worked on a book of crossword puzzles Paige had brought over. Toby let Happy write, even though all the drugs she was on made her normally-perfect handwriting nearly illegible. Whenever she got a word, he’d kiss her temple, so happy to that she was there, in front of him, slightly broken but healing.

* * *

 One morning, about a week and a half after she came home, Toby surprised Happy with a big stack of pancakes.

  
“What’s this?”

  
“You, my dear, are officially starting to wean yourself off your all-liquid diet. And I thought the perfect soft, spongy food to start with would be pancakes.”

  
There were no words to express Toby’s elation at seeing Happy’s eyes light up with excitement.

  
“Really?”

  
“Really, truly. I confirmed it with Dr. Black and everything.”

  
He set the plate down in front of her and then lied down beside her on the bed. She ate the pancakes gingerly, cutting them into tiny pieces and chewing them thoroughly before swallowing. He rested his check gently on her right shoulder, careful not to get in the way of the solid-food-fast breaking.

  
“Hey doc?” she said when she was almost finished with the entire stack.

  
“Yeah?”

  
“Can we talk about… about what I said, that first night in the hospital?”

  
Toby lifted his head. “Sure, sweetie.”

  
Happy knew she should say something. Her words had hung over them since they had escaped her lips and she had come to the conclusion that, as much as she normally hated these kinds of conversations, talking things through was the solution.

  
The only problem was, she didn’t really know what to say.

  
“I, um… I said that I love you.”

  
“You did.” Toby stroked her hair gently, trying his best to help her.

  
“I… I meant it.”

  
Toby face shifted slightly, and Happy could tell he was relieved. He hadn’t dared to bring it up, but he’d half thought that Happy either didn’t remember what she had said or had only let the words slip out in a drug-induced trance.

  
Now, he smiled at her before kissing her lips softly. She tasted like maple syrup.

  
“I’m glad.”

  
She moved her head to rest on his shoulder.

  
“I don’t really have anything to else to say.”

  
Toby laughed quietly. “Happy, I love you so, _so_ much.”


	10. Chapter 10

As it turned out, recovering from a broken femur was a long process. After a few weeks, Happy’s lung was nearly healed, her stomach and liver were almost fully functional, and her surgical scar had basically completely stopped giving her trouble, but the damned cast on her thigh was still there.

  
Getting around was a hassle. She had shifted from a wheelchair to a walker relatively early on, but navigating her walker through her tiny apartment was a daily struggle.

  
She flat-out refused to use the bedpan her doctors had given her. Instead, she talked Toby through building a contraption that would hoist her up to help her use a toilet. Even so, she found herself, much to Toby’s dismay, almost unconsciously avoiding drinking water because she knew it would make her go to the bathroom more.

  
The original plan had been for everyone to take shifts to take care of Happy, but Toby monopolized the schedule. He had dragged a few blankets and a pillow out of Happy’s closet that first day she was released, and now slept on the floor beside her every night, terrified that, if he got in bed with her, he’d roll over and knock something out of place on her delicately-held-together body.

  
He left her apartment only to go to his nightly meeting. For that hour and a half, another team member would come over, always with some fun activity to get Happy’s mind off the boredom of cabin fever, but she found that she would inevitably watch the clock, awaiting her boyfriend’s return.

  
Happy started physical therapy the week after her accident. Her therapist, Jessica, gave her some leg and hip exercises to try at home, which she did religiously. Prior to her accident, she had made it a point to run at least three times a week, and she hated watching her muscles atrophy with lack of use. Toby always watched her exercises nervously; he’d leap to catch her if it ever looked like she might fall.

  
On the day Dr. Black said Happy could move from oxycodone down to a mix of ibuprofen and acetaminophen, the entire team came over to celebrate. Happy hated oxycodone; it made her head swimmy and gave everything a dream-like sheen. Toby got her a cake that read _You’ve ibu-proven your strength!_ No one really thought it was a great pun, but everyone laughed anyway.

  
As time went on, the days started to pass by more slowly. She and Toby had watched every action movie on Netflix, read every book she owned, sorted through piles of junk she’d had lying around for years, and eventually resorted to trashy reality TV. Just when Happy thought she was going to lose her mind, Dr. Black said she could start working again.

  
“Nothing too daring,” he’d said, sharing a knowing look with Toby, whose stories about Happy climbing into air ducts and falling out of sand silos had delayed the work go-ahead at least a week. “And try to stay off your feet as much as possible. Your body will tell you when to stop.”

  
Paige got a huge _Welcome!_ banner for Happy’s return. The mechanic smiled when she sat at her desk, feeling the familiar bend of her old chair beneath her. The pile of case debriefs in front of her couldn’t even dampen her mood.

  
It wasn’t until she saw a similar pile on Toby’s desk that it clicked that he had taken a month off of work to take care of her. She knew that must have been hard for him to swing – he wasn’t exactly a saver.

  
That first day was uneventful. The team was in between cases; it was the kind of day that normally would have left Happy numb with boredom, but the change of scenery alone was enough to keep her perfectly content.

  
Around noon, Walter and Toby went to pick up some supplies for a research project, and Cabe and Sylvester went out to get lunch for everyone, leaving the two women of Scorpion alone. Paige, somewhat unnerved by the rare quiet, walked over to Happy to ask if her scarf matched her shirt. Happy looked up at her, brows furrowed.

  
"I am definitely not the right person to be asking that question to."

  
Paige smiled and shrugged. "It's just nice to have you back, Happy. And Toby, too. It's been so quiet without the two of you. No hammer bangs, no stupid jokes."

  
"Yeah, I've been absorbing all of his shenanigans."

  
Paige laughed. "I bet. He's practically moved in, hasn't he?"

  
Paige kept talking but Happy wasn't listening. _Moved in_. The words struck a chord in her.

  
She had moved out of her last foster home when she was sixteen years old, after a local judge agreed to let her emancipate herself, and had lived alone ever since. She'd never wanted a roommate; she'd lived in tiny holes-in-wall to avoid needing to get one. To her, living with someone else meant a constant battle over everything: food, clothes, chores. Before Toby, she would rarely even let her boyfriends come over to her place.

  
And now Toby had slept at her apartment every night for a month. She couldn't drive, thanks to her leg (and the fact that her car had been totaled by a 300-year-old sequoia), so Toby had to take her everywhere. A week after she came home from the hospital, he had taken the key to her front door off of her key chain and put it onto his to make things simpler. She hadn't thought anything of it; it was efficient.

  
But now, with the words _moved in_ echoing in her ears, that small action seemed monumental. She felt panic growing in her stomach, the same feeling she used to get when she overheard her latest foster parents talk about sending her back. Except now, she didn't feel unwanted; she felt trapped.

  
"Happy? Hello? You in there?"

  
Happy’s eyes jerked up to see Paige looking at her expectantly.

  
"Sorry, what?"

  
"I asked when the doctor said you'd get your cast off."

  
"Oh. He's not sure, but maybe in six weeks."

  
"That'll be nice, huh? That thing must be such a hassle."

  
"Yeah."

  
"Hey, you okay?"

  
Happy nodded. "Just a little tired."

  
Paige frowned, concerned. "Do you need to go home? Toby said that your doctor said not to overdo it. I'd be happy to drive you."

  
"No, I'm fine. I'll be better once I have some lunch."

* * *

 When Toby returned from his outing, Happy pretended to be focused on screwing two pieces of an engine together to avoid looking at him. For the rest of the afternoon, she refused to glance over at his desk, afraid of catching his eye.

  
Around six, everyone started packing up and heading home. Paige left first to pick Ralph up from the sitter, and then Walter walked out with Sylvester. Cabe left a few minutes later.

  
When the door shut behind the agent, silence fell on the garage. Toby folded his hands on his desk and looked over to Happy.

  
"Hey," he said after a moment. Happy didn't respond.

  
"Hey," he repeated.

  
“Yeah?” she said without looking up. Toby walked over.

  
“Are you okay?”

  
“’M fine.”

  
He crossed his arms, looking worried. “Do you want to go home now?”

  
“Sure.”

  
Happy didn’t talk as she packed up her stuff and made her way slowly to Toby’s car. On the ride home, she met Toby’s light-hearted attempts at small talk only with snappish, monosyllabic answers. Eventually, he gave up on conversation and put on the radio, turning the volume up just a little too loud.

  
The silence lasted until they reached Happy’s apartment and Toby placed her bag, which he had carried in, as she couldn’t hold it while using her walker, on the table in by the front door.

  
Happy placed herself between Toby and the living room, a defensive position that Toby immediately picked up on.

  
“I think you should go home.”

  
The words took Toby by surprise. Happy still had to hobble around; she could barley shower or cook without help. He’d been expecting to stay and look after her at least until her cast was removed.

  
“Are you sure? What about your dinner?”

  
“I’ll be fine.” Happy was looking right into his eyes with a kind of dead stare. “This isn’t your apartment, you know.”

  
“I just want to make sure you’ll be okay.”

  
“I’ll be fine,” she repeated.

  
“O-okay.” Toby turned towards the door, but Happy put an arm out and grasped his shoulder gently.

  
“Could you please give me my key back?”

  
Toby looked at her for a moment before nodding. His hands shook slightly as he took the key off his key ring and put it in her hand. She didn’t look at him as he walked out into the hallway; she shut the door behind him without a word.


	11. Chapter 11

The next morning, Toby called Happy to see if she needed a ride to work. She didn’t pick up, but a few minutes later he got a text from Paige saying she would drive the mechanic. When Toby got to the garage, Happy was absorbed in a conversation with Walter. Before he got a chance to talk to her, Cooper showed up with a new assignment that had Toby, Walter, Tim, and Cabe all going to Paris for three days. Happy left with Paige to drop Ralph off at school without saying goodbye.

  
That night, when Paige drove Happy home, the mechanic brought a heavy sort of silence into the car.

  
For as long as Paige had been on the team, it had always been a delicate balance, coaxing humanity out of her geniuses. They had a tendency to shut down if prodded at the wrong time. But she had spent the day watching Toby watch Happy anxiously and seeing Happy determinedly not look back at him. No matter how precarious the situation, Paige figured it was time to speak up.

  
"Why'd you ask me to drive you to work today?"

  
Happy looked at her as if it was the stupidest question that she'd ever been asked.

  
"Well, my car is currently in some junkyard downtown, waiting to be crushed and buried for the rest of eternity, and my left leg is absolutely useless in this thing, so." She pointed to her cast.

  
"You know what I mean. Why me? Toby's been driving you everywhere since your accident."

  
Happy looked straight ahead. She grasped at the soft cotton on her legs – sweatpants were the only thing that fit over her cast.

  
"Mm." She shrugged.

  
"That's what Ralph says when I ask him why he stayed up past his bedtime playing on my computer."

  
Happy smiled without joy. "Smart kid."

  
"Come on, Happy. What happened? Did you two fight?"

  
"No, we didn't _fight."_ The word came out mockingly. It was the kind of thing a social worker would ask when Happy would request to be relocated from a foster home. Her complaints of drunk dads and careless moms always fell on deaf ears.

  
Paige waited for Happy to keep talking, but she didn't.

  
"Look," Paige said, when it was clear Happy wasn't going to continue the conversation on her own. "Toby just left for three days to go off and save the world and you didn't even bother saying goodbye. Something happened between you two."

  
"Yeah, I got sick of his stupid puns and Harvard references."

  
"Or maybe," Paige said quietly, "you realized you two were getting really close, and you got scared and pushed him away?"

  
Happy was about to snap _don’t shrink me_ when she remembered she wasn't talking to Toby. She was so used to being constantly surrounded by his antics that saying things like that had become reflexive.

  
"Happy, I'm not going to pretend to understand what your childhood was like or what effect that must have had on you. But I know that Toby really cares about you, and I bet you anything he's wishing you would just talk to him about what you're feeling."

  
Just then, they pulled into the parking lot in front of Happy's apartment, and she nearly leapt out of the car – or, as close to leapt as she could with a ten pound cast around her thigh.

  
"Thanks for the ride."

  
"Do you need a hand getting up to your-"

  
"No, I'm fine. See you tomorrow."

  
Happy shut the car door before Paige could say anything more. Paige watched her hobble up through the front doors to her building and disappear inside. She sat in the parking lot for a minute, wondering how many tiny moments in her life had manifested in this instant right now, sitting in a dark car, staring at the space where a diminutive, broken genius had just been.

* * *

The trip to France passed miserably. The case was high-stakes but straightforward and only took about four hours a day. For the rest of the time, Walter worked on a programming project, Tim and Cabe swapped war stories, and Toby moped around the hotel room, wanting more than anything to find the nearest casino.

  
He didn’t, though. He read through every magazine in the hotel lobby, made ridiculously elaborate houses of cards, and channel surfed until his eyes glazed over, but he did not gamble. Christine – who he, at her request, called every night – congratulated him endlessly on this. But it didn’t feel like a victory, not really.

  
By the final night of the mission, Toby was antsy with inaction. He'd done his part – analyze security film to pick out a few likely suspects for the attack that the French police were certain would happen the following evening. Now Walter had to hack some fancy computers to narrow the suspect pool down to one. Cabe and Tim were dealing with the French director-general’s people in the lobby, so Toby had absolutely nothing to keep his mind from wandering to certain adorable mechanics halfway across the world. He found himself hovering by Walter’s desk, watching the computer screen over his friend’s shoulder.

  
“Toby, I would very much appreciate it if you would stop breathing on my neck.”

  
“The phrase is ‘breathing down my neck’, my friend.”

  
“I wasn't trying to use a _phrase._ You are not breathing ‘down’ my neck. Your breath is angled nearly perfectly horizontally. You are-”

  
“Got it, got it, no imprecise English conventions for you. Point taken.”

  
Toby was just so _bored._ A few months ago, he would have immediately started making wagers in a situation like this. His mind still automatically scanned through their hotel room, looking for bet-able scenarios. He was slightly worried that, without anything to keep him occupied, his hands would start instinctively shuffling a deck of cards that wasn't there.

  
“Hey Walter?”

  
“Kind of in the middle of something here, Toby.”

  
“Come on, we both know you could hack the NSA in your sleep.”

  
“That's a common misconception: the NSA's security is actually lower-tech than-”

  
Toby started fake snoring, prompting Walter to roll his eyes.

  
After about forty-five more seconds of absolutely all-consuming boredom, Toby tried again.

  
“So, Walter, what's new on the Paige front?"

  
“Excuse me?”

  
“You know, have you two been canoodling recently?”

  
“As your boss, I'm making the executive decision that we work the rest of tonight's mission in silence.”

  
_Great,_ Toby thought. _My favorite_.

  
He walked over to the window and pulled the heavy curtain aside to look out at the street below. It wasn't one of the romantic café-filled neighborhoods that frequented the Parisian-set movies, but it was a nice enough view. Despite the late hour, thick streams of people walked around determinedly – a perfect distraction for a behaviorist.

  
The scene was just starting to calm him when he caught a glimpse of a long black ponytail bouncing around the corner. For a split second, his brain registered it as Happy, and his heart fluttered. Almost immediately he realized that he was mistaken – the ponytail belonged to a tail woman wearing a bright pink coat that was much more flamboyant than anything Happy owned – but he was still instantly off-put.

  
He shut the curtain and jerked backwards. Walter looked up, alarmed, but went back to his work when he saw Toby standing there, unharmed. The psychiatrist walked numbly into the suite’s bathroom. He turned the faucet on and ran his hands under the cold water, trying to ground himself, but his head was spinning.

  
He missed Happy. He really, really, _really_ missed Happy.


	12. Chapter 12

When the Paris mission was over, the men flew back to LA. Their flight was delayed, and Toby didn’t get home until at eight at night Pacific Time, which was crack-of-dawn Central Europe Time, so he was exhausted. But he couldn’t sleep. He laid in his bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking of his little blanket nest back at Happy’s place, wondering if she had dismantled it.

  
He felt absolutely alone. He had spent the last month falling asleep to the sound of Happy’s even breathing, and now the silence was unbearable. It brought back memories of nights from his childhood, when his mom would take off drinking and his dad would crawl off to a shady poker game, leaving him alone in the house, nothing but the hum of the radiator for company.

  
_A poker game._

  
He rolled out of bed and grabbed his keys. As he was getting in his car, he remembered all the times he had done this, ran off to Nick’s late-night poker game to self-medicate insomnia. Adrenaline started leaking into his blood, forcing his heart to beat a little bit faster.

  
Some part of him didn’t want to do this. The image of Paige’s bowl, holding his three chips – twenty-four hours, thirty days, sixty days of sobriety – kept trying to push its way to the front of his consciousness, but the rush of it all was overpowering. Holding waxy cards in his hands, staring around a dimly lit table, analyzing every inhale, every nose-scratch, every twitch – he was nearly salivating at the thought of it.

  
He was ready to do it. He was ready to relapse.

  
But, right before he reached Nick’s apartment, he caught a glimpse of a newly-erected billboard. It featured a smiling man holding a wrench, surrounded by huge red letters. _Car troubles? Call Manny the mechanic!_ Toby wasn’t a tool expert, but he could swear Happy had the exact same kind of wrench.

  
He realized there was somewhere he’d rather be.

  
He clenched his jaw and made a quick U-turn. LA traffic normally slowed down around nine, so it only took a few minutes to get to Happy’s place. He took the steps up to her floor two at a time, not thinking he could bear waiting for the elevator. When he got to her door, he instinctually pulled out his key ring to unlock it, before remembering she had taken her key back.

  
He brought his knuckles down on the door twice. It was a solid two minutes before he heard shuffling inside, and another sixty seconds before the door creaked open, revealing Happy and her walker.

  
“Toby? You’re back?” Happy rubbed her eyes groggily.

  
“Our plane just landed a couple of hours ago. Can I come in?”

  
She looked as if she was going to say no, but moved out of the way and motioned for him to enter.

  
Once he got inside, he paused. He hadn’t exactly planned the trip, and he didn’t know what to say, where to begin. Soon, though, words just started coming out of his mouth.

  
“Happy, I love you. I love you so much. And I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I got mad at you and let you leave my apartment when you were so angry and that I almost got you killed. I’m sorry that, because of me, you had to spend four nights in a hospital and take a month off of work and take that oxycodone that you hated and still can’t go on missions and have to wear that god-forsaken cast.” His voice was speeding up as he went. “And I’m sorry that I’m a mess of a person with a terrible past. But I just – I want to – I’m _so sorry_ , Happy. Please forgive me. Please.”

  
Happy stared at him blankly.

  
“Toby, what the hell are you doing?”

  
“I'm throwing away my pride to beg for you to take me back."

  
"Take you back?"

  
Happy was absolutely exhausted. She'd spent the last three nights alone after Paige dropped her off at her apartment, puttering around aimlessly. She couldn't really cook, at least not anything that required standing by the counter or stove for any length of time, and she had no way to go out and get food. Paige had offered to take her to Kovalsky's a few times, but she'd always refused, fearing a repeat of the pseudo-intervention from that first car ride home. She'd pretty much eaten nothing but cereal and untoasted bread for three days.

  
Toby had kept her pain medicine on the top shelf of the medicine cabinet and, somewhere along the way, that became the small bottle’s home; it felt wrong to move it down. But her arms were constantly sore from using a walker, so reaching up for the medicine was unpleasant. She often just went to bed without taking it, even though she'd invariably wake up in the middle of the night, whole body throbbing. Her brain was starting to shut down from the hunger and exhaustion.

  
And now here was Toby, the man she'd done everything in her power not to think about over the past three days, talking so quickly that it took all the effort her muddy brain could muster just to follow along.

  
"I know, I basically almost killed you, but Happy-"

  
"You think I'm mad about the accident?"

  
"You almost died. And I get it, I get that you don't want to be with someone who-”

  
Happy finally grasped what Toby was saying.

  
"Toby, we didn't break up."

  
That stopped the psychiatrist's normally-uninterruptable flow of words for a minute.

  
"What?"

  
"We didn't break up, did we?"

  
"Happy, you kicked me out of your apartment. You took your key back. I don't know what your definition of 'break up' is, but that fits mine."

  
Happy felt her stomach start to flutter just as the room began to tilt slightly. Her body really wasn't up to having this conversation right now, but she couldn't process doing anything but continuing to talk.

  
"I took my key back because it's the only key I have."

  
“You don’t have a single copy of the key to your front door?”

  
“No.”

  
“Why on Earth-” Toby shook his head to get himself back on track. "So you don't want to break up?"

  
Happy opened her mouth to say _No, you dummy_ , but instead, without her really wanting it to, a sob came out. Toby eyes widened in bewilderment.

  
"Happy? Happy, what's wrong?"

  
The overwhelming fatigue inside of her, catalyzed by the intense conversation, finally boiled over, and she was completely consumed by a fit of tears. Her lung was still weak from her accident, but she was too inundated with sorrow to feel the twinge of pain in her back. Her sobs got louder and louder until Toby started to worry a neighbor might call the police.

  
He led her to her sofa, where she sat, vacillating between weeping uncontrollably and gasping for breath. Her head began to ache from a lack of oxygen.

  
"Happy, I think you're having an anxiety attack." The words reached her muffled and distorted, as if she was underwater. "I want you to try to breathe with me, can you do that?"

  
_Yes, I can do that_. It was a moment before she realized that the words didn't come out; they got swallowed up in her sobs. Toby was counting inhales or exhales or something, but she couldn't focus, could barely even imagine a world where she once knew how to count to eight. She felt nausea creeping up in her throat. Toby saw what was happening and ran to the kitchen to get a bowl a moment before she threw up.

  
After her stomach was empty, she began to calm a little. Her breathing fell in line with Toby's counting and the swimminess in her head started to fade. Toby brought a damp washcloth from the bathroom and gently wiped the remaining vomit off of her lips.

  
"I'm sorry," she got out, half choking on the words.

  
Toby squeezed her hand gently. "It's okay, sweetie. It's okay."

  
Her break down caught him totally off-guard. If he had thought through his conversation with Happy at all before showing up, this would definitely not have been how he would’ve predicted it would go. His med-school training had kicked in pretty quickly, bringing a calm, competent veneer over him, but he was internally baffled. He’d watched Happy almost drown, leap from cars moments before they exploded, get threatened at gunpoint, but he’d never seen her this vulnerable. If he were being honest, he’d admit that he hadn’t really thought she loved him enough to be this affected by him.

  
They sat together for a long time while Happy focused on keeping her breaths even and her head grounded. Toby stroked her hair and whispered softly in her ears. She hadn't cried like that in years, since she was in foster care and realized the kids who cry get sent back the fastest.

  
Eventually, she broke the silence.

  
"I don't want you to move in with me."

  
Toby was surprised by the seemingly-random statement, but simply said, "Okay."

  
"But I don't want to break up with you, either."

  
Toby kissed her temple.

  
After a minute, he got up and went in the kitchen. Happy heard the sink running and vaguely realized that he was cleaning the bowl she had thrown up in. Then eclectic cooking sounds began: pots and pans clanging together, cabinet doors opening and closing. If she hadn't just vomited, she was sure her stomach would be burning with the thought of real food.

  
Toby came back with a bowl of warm chicken broth, a banana, and – relief flooded Happy at the sight of them – two ibuprofen pills.

  
"These will help settle your stomach, love."

  
Happy ate, feeling completely empty. There was a shooting pain behind her eyes from her forceful sobs. She chewed the food mindlessly, barely able to taste it.

  
A primordial reaction in Toby – drilled in by years of practicing psychiatry, forcing patients to open up – wanted to talk more. He could assume a good amount, but he there was so much more to ask: when exactly their spending time together had turned from carefree to entrapping; if it was something specific he had done; if she could tell him more about what happened when she was younger to emotionally shut her off like this, so they could share the burden of her past together. But he knew he shouldn’t – couldn’t – saddle her already-fragile psyche with those questions. And so he just sat with Happy, rubbing her back gently to remind her that he was there, and silently thanked Manny the mechanic for saving him.


	13. Chapter 13

From then on, Toby was exceptionally careful. He still came over to Happy’s house almost every night to cook for her and keep her company, but he would almost always leave for the night and return in the morning. And he stayed as far away from the single copy of her key as possible.

  
Walter, Sylvester, and Cabe were completely oblivious to the momentary glitch in Happy’s and Toby’s relationship. But, the day after their return from Paris, when Paige saw the couple walk into the garage together in the morning, she smiled, thanking whatever god had control over geniuses.

  
Happy was healing quickly, but not quickly enough for her liking. She’d taken to trying to get around her apartment without her without her walker, something not advised by Dr. Black, Jessica, or Toby. She was just so sick of the thing, of dragging it around and listening to the awful squeaking noise the legs made when they slid across the hardwood floors in her apartment. After Doctor Black told her that her cast-removal date was dependent on her performance in physical therapy, she started asking Jessica what she could do to improve at every session. The woman always said that same thing: _You’re doing everything you can. All we can do is wait and let your body do its thing._

  
Unsatisfied, Happy tried to double her physical therapy routines, hoping it might make her leg heal faster. She went on like that for about a week, not really seeing any progress, other than being twice as sore, until Toby found out what she was doing and – only half-jokingly – threatened to assign someone to watch her round-the-clock to make sure she didn’t overdo it. So she puttered around with her walker, grumbling.

  
Soon, Toby started getting bits and pieces of history out of Happy. One night, he cooked chicken casserole and rice for dinner, and Happy frowned when she saw it.

  
“Do you want something else?” he asked.

  
“No, I like casserole, it’s just…” She shook her head. “Something from when I was younger.”

  
She was planning on stopping there, but Toby looked at her with such openness, such lack of judgment, that she kept going.

  
“When I was twelve, I stayed at this one home for five months – that was kind of a long time for me. The parents were pretty nice most of the time. And there was another girl, Taylor, who slept in the same room as me. She was so… bubbly, you know? Always smiling.”

  
Happy paused long enough for Toby to think she was done talking, but then she continued.

  
“We got to be pretty close. She was just a little bit older than me. I kind of thought-” She stopped midsentence and shook her head. “We just got to be close. And then the mom of the house, it was her birthday, and we were going to have this nice dinner. Taylor was setting the table and she dropped this really nice antique plate that had belonged to the woman’s grandmother or something. And the dad… He just snapped, just like that. He hit Taylor so hard he broke her jaw.” Happy started down at her plate for a minute and then shrugged, as if trying to shake the heaviness of the memory off her shoulders. “Taylor really liked chicken casserole, so.”

  
Toby walked over to her and kissed the top of her head. “I’m sorry that happened. Thank you for sharing that with me.”

  
A week later, they were half-watching the local news together on their day off, a Monopoly game on the coffee table. Toby always won at Monopoly – he had some strategy he'd never reveal – but tonight Happy was holding her own. She suspected he was letting her win.

  
The lanky newscaster started talking about a nonprofit that had worked to keep a local park from being turned into an office building. The cameras panned over a small open space in the middle of the city, complete with park benches and half-dead grass. Happy froze, halfway finished moving her top hat down to Kentucky Avenue.

  
“Hey, Happy, you okay?”

  
“Yeah, I’m fine,” she said without looking at him.

  
“Have you heard of that nonprofit?” Toby pointed to the TV.

  
She shook her head. “No, but I – I’ve been to that park before.”

  
“That park? It’s all the way up in Pasadena.”

  
“When I was younger.”

  
“Mm.”

  
Toby put on his keep-going-if-you-want face. Happy fiddled with the dice, sliding her fingers over the small dimples in the shiny surface, before continuing.

  
“In eighth grade, I lived with this lady named Marcia. She was really nice; she had six kids of her own and fostered three more when they went off to college. She was older, maybe in her late sixties. She loved that park; she’d take me and the two other foster kids there all the time.” Happy smiled slightly. “She’d sit on the bench knitting and telling us all these great stories about being a nurse during the Korean War and getting a PhD as a women in the fifties and everything.”

  
Toby brushed a lock of Happy’s hair behind her shoulder. “Marcia sounds like a pretty amazing woman.”

  
Happy nodded. “She was. But, right before I graduated middle school, she was diagnosed with stage four breast cancer. She died the summer before I started freshmen year. So I went back to the orphanage. I didn’t even get to go to her funeral.” Tears were blurring her vision; she looked up at the ceiling and blinked them away.

  
Toby automatically reached out and pulled Happy into a hug. She was reluctant – she never liked touching after she'd shared something personal; it felt too much like pity – but eventually pressed her face into his shoulder.

  
"Happy," he whispered in her ear. "You are so _loved."_

  
Toby held tight to these tidbits, little scraps of thread that he would try to weave into a complete picture of Happy’s childhood. Sometimes, when she told him the inevitably sadly-ending stories, he’d feel a primal urge to one-up them. _Oh, your foster dad punched your foster sister? Well, my mom broke a bottle of whiskey over my dad’s head on my sixth birthday._ He always bit his tongue when that happened, half to keep quiet and half to punish himself. And sometimes he’d feel pain for Happy so deeply that it was all he could do not to smother her with affection to make up for her past.


	14. Chapter 14

Four months after her accident, Happy got her cast removed. It was probably the most exciting development of the entire healing process – more so than solid food or over-the-counter painkillers – not because it meant she could finally shower without wrapping her leg up or go to the bathroom unencumbered, but because it marked the end of the worst medical restriction Dr. Black had given her.

  
There was a strict no-sex rule while she had a cast encasing her thigh. The situation was just “too delicate”, Dr. Black had told her. She was _one hundred percent_ positive that, considering she and Toby had a combined IQ of well over three hundred, they could find a way to safely sleep together, but she’d been much too embarrassed to say so in front of Dr. Black. When she’d brought it up with Toby later, he’d laughed.

  
_“I’m sure you’re right, Happy, but I think it’s best to listen to the doctors.”_

  
_“You’re a doctor, so, if you say yes, I will be listening to a doctor.”_

  
_He leaned down to kiss the top of her head. “Sweetheart, you got really banged up. If there’s even a chance it could hurt you…” He shook his head._

  
She replayed that conversation over in her mind as she watched the technician saw her cast off, as she got the brace that she would have to wear for another few months, and as she signed form after form. It reminded her of Toby’s declaration from over a year ago: _Do you know there’s a better chance of a nuclear apocalypse than of me every hurting you?_

  
She drove herself home, finally able to fit in the driver’s seat now that her leg could bend. She and Toby had gone to a dealership to get her a new car the week before, when Dr. Black had told her she’d be getting her cast off. Her beloved truck had been completely totaled in her crash, and she’d been dragging her feet on getting a new one, claiming she didn’t need one as long as she couldn’t drive. She’d had that truck for years, less because it was reliable – she had to work on it nearly constantly – than because she hated buying cars. The haggling was exhausting. She would’ve happily just driven her motorcycle everywhere, if Dr. Black hadn’t explicitly forbidden it until she’d had her cast off for at least two months.

  
But, this time around, Toby had handled all of the negotiations, much to her delight. She’d ended up just sitting, drinking cheap complimentary coffee, and skimming gossip magazines while he quibbled for hours.

  
When she got home, her apartment was empty. Toby was off at some medical conference, getting to play bigwig doctor, his favorite role. She glanced at the clock; he’d be back soon. He was going pick up dinner and bring it over to her apartment.

  
Walking around was difficult. Dr. Black gave her crutches to use for a while, but she hated them even more than she hated her walker – they pressed painfully into her armpits with every step – so she was trying to get away without using them. Her left leg was weak and sore and the brace was awkward; she had to hobble around.

  
She decided to shower. Her leg had spent the past sixteen weeks without being washed, a reality she didn’t really want to think about. After she went into her bathroom and got undressed, careful not to jostle her leg too much as she took off its brace, she stared at her naked body in the mirror. There was a long scar running horizontally across the outside of her thigh from where the doctors had reset the bone. Her muscles had shrunk in the last four months; her left leg was noticeably smaller than her right. And, after she got off the appetite-suppressing oxycodone, she's started gaining weight; there was a slight bulge of fat over her hipbones that wasn't there before.

  
These physical changes didn't make her sad, not really – she knew her muscles would grow back and the bulge would shrink and the scar would start to fade. Soon, two thin lines of discoloration – one on her leg and a matching one on her back – would be the only record of her accident. But her oddly skinny leg and protruding stomach were something, transient marks from one night, temporary tattoos that read _stupid decision_.

  
She stepped into the shower, relishing not having to meticulously wrap up a hunk of plaster. The water felt odd on the skin of her thigh – it was so used to being completely protected – but she loved the sensation of complete cleanliness, not qualified by the weight of an old, sweaty cast. Once out of the shower, she put on one of the three pairs of shorts she owned, just because she loved being able to see her left leg.

  
Just as she finished brushing her hair, the front door opened and Toby called her name. She rushed into the living room, beaming.

  
"Happy! Your leg!" He placed two bags of carry-out on the floor by his feet.

  
"It's finally free." She posed for him, jokingly holding her leg out in front of her like a model showing off a particularly well-cut pair of pants. Toby walked up to her and wrapped her in a hug.

  
"Congratulations," he whispered in her ear.

  
"Remember what this means?"

  
Toby chuckled. They'd talked about the day with anticipation, normally following an hour of making out that went nowhere, thanks to his firm position that they needed to listen to Dr. Black.

  
He ran his hand slowly down her back. She exhaled softly, feeling her heart start to beat faster. He lifted her up and set her down on the kitchen counter, kissing her neck. Four months ago, it wouldn't have been an uncommon action, but now, with the brace pressing into her hip and her leg resting uncomfortably on the tile countertop, it made Happy wince. Toby immediately pulled back.

  
"Are you okay?"

  
"Yeah."

  
"Are you sure?"

  
"Positive. Maybe just stick with soft surfaces for a while, 'kay?"

  
Toby smiled. "I can think of one or two places like that."

  
He helped her down and led her to her bed, sliding her shirt off as he went.


	15. Chapter 15

Back at the coffee table.

  
It had been five months since that first meeting. Toby had started to get to know some more people in the meeting; there was an index of the regulars' faces growing in his mind. Sometimes, at night, when his apartment was quiet and lonely and his mind was drifting off to treacherous places fervently enough that Christine's meditation exercises weren't helping, he'd imagine those faces in the settings of their meeting stories. To remind himself what he was fighting, he'd fill his head with sickening images: Gary, the exceptionally friendly old man who dressed up as Santa Clause every winter and went around to local elementary schools, sitting in jail for trying to sell a stolen car to buy his way into a craps game. Francis, who came to every meeting dressed in business suits that dripped with confidence, holed up in a motel, ignoring calls from banks and credit card companies and her ex-wife, desperately hoping she'd hidden well enough that the loan shark from the next state over wouldn't find her and take her tongue as payment for her debts.

  
For a long time, Toby had snubbed Gambler's Anonymous as a poor – and dumb – man's mental medicine. There was no way that he, a Harvard-trained genius, could find anything useful there. But the stories he heard were not really so unlike his own: fear, desperation, lack of control. And so, without really knowing why, he kept coming.

  
Which is how he found himself here, in front of the cheap folding table that held the essential caffeine – the caffeination station, he'd heard it affectionately called – on a tired Sunday evening.

  
Christine wasn't here tonight. She normally came every Sunday and Thursday, but she was currently out in Montana visiting family. He'd told her about his almost-relapse when he got back from Paris. Some part of him had expected her to be disappointed, but she'd just nodded solemnly and congratulated him for making it through the night with his sobriety.

  
There was movement in the corner of his eye, and Toby looked up to see a man around his own age standing next to him. He realized he was relieved; ever since Happy had mistaken Christine for a mistress, Toby had almost unconsciously started to gravitate towards men in the program as opposed to women.

  
"Hey," the man said. His voice was deep, fitting with his muscular physique.

  
"Hi."

  
"I'm Phil." He stuck his hand out and Toby shook it.

  
"Toby."

  
"So, Toby, this your first meeting?"

  
"No, I've been coming here for a few months. You?"

  
"First time at this meeting. I just moved here from Boulder."

  
"Welcome to LA."

  
Usually, Toby loved small talk. It was perhaps the easiest way to get a complete psychological picture of someone you just met. People responded immediately to well-timed questions about their jobs, hobbies, families. Toby could learn more in a ten-minute conversation about the latest episode of _The Walking Dead_ than most psychiatrists could in a year of therapy sessions.

  
But something about meetings turned off his pervasive need to psychoanalyze. He was there for his own personal benefit, and examining other people's minds turned into a distraction; small talk around the coffee table became a chore.

  
"Thanks, man. Hey, I uh..." Phil put his hand awkwardly on the back of his head. "I don't know many people around here. Want to go get a coffee, or something?"

  
A multitude of sentences came to Toby's lips. _You know, it's probably not the best idea, as a gambling addict, to build a friend base solely of other gambling addicts._ And, _There is literally coffee right in front of us_. And, _I'm tired and you're boring, so I don't really want to spend any more time with you than I have to_.

  
But Toby could tell the man identified strongly with passivity, and that admitting he was lonely was hard. Plus, Happy had offered him one of her rare _I love you_ s that morning, so he was feeling especially benevolent. He nodded.

  
"Sure. I know a nice place down the street called Kovalsky's."

* * *

 Phil, as it turned out, was slightly less boring than he had seemed - but only slightly.

  
Once the men sat down together at Kovalsky's together, outside of the self-help atmosphere of the church basement, Toby’s genius and curiosity gradually came to life. He remembered the joy of unraveling a person like a tangled ball of yarn, so he kept Phil talking.

  
The man had a pretty average story: only child, grew up in a no-name town in the Midwest, got a nine-to-five job straight out of college and married soon after. He went out of his way to mention that his wife really liked yellow roses, which was an interesting thing to throw in, psychologically speaking. His life then turned into Gamblers'-Anonymous cliché: he got bored after his second kid was born and started gambling. As life got more boring, the gambling got worse, until his wife divorced him and he moved out to Colorado to clear his head. He cleaned up after a couple months out there, and hadn't gambled in six years.

  
_Six years._ The words made Toby hyper-aware of his six-month chip, which he had just received a week earlier, still sitting in his jacket pocket because he hadn't moved it to his bowl yet. He reached his hand in his jacket now, flipping the coin over in his fingers.

  
"So, Toby, what about you? What's your story?"

  
In his distraction, Toby had let the conversation pause long enough for Phil to think he had become bored – a rookie mistake. He'd be able to turn it back around soon, but he was momentarily stuck talking about himself.

  
Normally, he'd make up some forgettable story, but, seeing as Phil was presumably going to the same meeting as him for the foreseeable future, he figured that wasn't exactly an option. He went with something rather new to him: the truth.

  
"Oh, you know how it is. We didn't have much growing up; I gambled to pay for college. Then college stopped" – _and I went to Harvard med school as a teenager because I am a lot smarter than you will ever be_ – "but the gambling kept going. I efficiently alienated my now-ex-fiancé and dug myself a neat hole when a friend helped me get myself together a little bit."

  
"And you stopped gambling?"

  
"Not exactly. I kept going off and on, less so than I used to but enough to be... inconvenient. I quit about six months ago."

  
"Well, hey." Phil clapped him on the back, an awkward action, over the length of the diner table. "Congrats, man."

  
“So what’s Boulder like? I’ve never been out there.”

  
“Aw, man, it’s great.” Phil started talking about the amazing skiing spots near his old house, and Toby noted the way he slipped in little brags about his skiing ability. The psychiatrist smiled to himself. _I could write a psych eval on this guy right now._

  
They kept talking for another half hour before Phil said that it was getting late.

  
“I guess I’ll see you next week, Toby?”

  
“Sure thing. Have a good night.”

  
As Toby walked to his car through the windy night, his felt for his six-month chip again. He thought of the closest casino, a few blocks away, and realized he truly didn’t want to go there. He wanted to go to Happy’s apartment, as they’d planned before his meeting, and eat a late dinner with her and laugh about their latest case with her and tell her about this odd man he’d just had coffee with.

  
For the first time in a long time, Toby realized he was completely, unequivocally happy.


	16. Chapter 16

Toby found it when he was digging through the bottom drawer in the bureau in her room, where she kept all the things she didn't want but couldn't throw away. He was wary of going through her stuff like this, ever since her pre-Paris panic about boundaries (he'd come to refer to it as triple-P, because for some reason Happy seemed to find it easier to talk about anything emotional in terms of goofy acronyms and vague pseudonyms), but she'd asked him to get the sketches for an old project of hers.

  
Before the triple-P, they'd gone through everything in the storage locker she was assigned in the basement of her building – paperwork from old jobs, power tools that had stopped working but she was convinced she could bring back to life. There was nothing really personal there, though. At first, Toby thought she didn't have any mementos to hold onto, but lately he'd been suspecting she just kept them somewhere less prone to electrical fires.

  
Now, as he was looking for the blue notebook she had described, he kept half an eye out for anything that looked like it might have come from her childhood. He didn't find anything like that, or the notebook, for that matter, but he did find a delicately rolled up piece of paper, which he carefully flattened.

  
When he first saw what it was, he thought it was a photograph; it looked that real. But then his eyes registered small smudges of graphite around the edges of the paper, and he realized it was hand-drawn.

  
He'd seen Happy hash out incredibly accurate machine schematics, but this was entirely different. It was an old engine, drawn from a creative angle, not the kind of thing a mechanic would use to document a specimen. Every detail of the picture was perfect, down to the droplets of condensation on the valves and the little bits of rust on the piston.

  
"Hey Happy?" he called, walking into the living room with the paper in his hand. Happy craned her neck to see him from the sofa.

  
"Yeah?"

  
"What's this?"

  
She looked confused at first when he held the paper up, but soon recognition crossed her face.

  
"Oh, that. It's just something I drew."

  
"You drew this?" Toby asked, looking slightly dubious.

  
"You don't have to sound so surprised."

  
"It's amazing."

  
Happy shrugged.

  
"Okay, this isn't a shrug-it-off kind of thing. How come you never let on about this?"

  
"It's nothing, really. I'm good with visual stuff, you know? Machines, schematics. Drawing's just another thing like that. I'm good with my hands, so I can draw."

  
"Happy, I could snip a hypothalamus out of someone’s brain in my sleep. I know what it means to be good with your hands. This is a lot more than that."

  
She wrinkled her nose bashfully.

  
"Do you have more drawings?"

  
She shrugged in a way that he knows means she does. Part of him wanted to leap forward, latch onto the subject until she revealed where's she keeps her art, but he held back. _Boundaries._

  
“Can I keep this?”

  
Happy raised her eyebrows. “If you want.”

  
Toby gently tucked it in his bag and then went to sit next to Happy on the sofa. She leaned into him.

  
“I couldn’t find your notebook, sweetheart.”

  
“Mm, it’s okay. I don’t really feel like looking over the sketches right now, anyway. Can we watch a movie instead?”

  
“Of course.”

  
They’d exhausted Happy’s DVD collection two weeks into her post-accident bedrest, so Toby just channel surfed until he found a movie playing on TV. Happy settled immediately into watching Mathew McConaughey travel through space to try to save the world from some unspecified agricultural apocalypse. Toby, on the other hand, was – yet again – lost in analysis.

  
There were good days and bad days.

  
There were days like this one, when Happy cuddled with Toby, laughed at his stupid jokes, let him kiss her cheek and sometimes even kissed his back – basically, unashamedly acted nauseatingly smitten. And then there were days where she sat down on the couch just far enough that he couldn’t comfortably put his arm around her shoulder, sat in silence while they watched TV or ate dinner, kept glancing towards the clock until he got the hint that she wanted him to leave.

  
After a few minutes of dire space emergencies unfolding on the television, Toby spoke up.

  
“Happy, can I ask you something?”

  
She looked at him out of the corner of her eye, wondering if anything good had ever come after that question. “Sure.”

  
“You seem to have different… moods.”

  
“Yeah, that’s kind of how being a person works, doc. Didn’t they teach you that at Harvard?”

  
“No, that’s not what I meant. I’m trying to say you have different moods… about me.”

  
Happy immediately knew what he was talking about. She’d noticed her the wide discrepancy in her actions. She had no idea where the moods came from, and she didn’t really want to discuss them. When she was in a cuddly mood, it was almost impossible to imagine not wanting to spend every waking moment with Toby, and when she was in an unresponsive mood, it was equally impossible to imagine wanting to touch him at all.

  
She just said “Mm.”

  
“Can you tell me why that is?”

  
She shook her head.

  
“Is that because you don’t want to tell me, or because you don’t know?”

  
“Because I don’t know.”

  
This was how most of their emotional conversations went: Toby gently coaxing out bits of information, Happy doing her best to not shut down. As much as these talks made her skin crawl, she would admit that he was good at them, at putting abstract feelings into words without forcing thoughts onto her. She understood why he had risen to fame in the psychiatry world.

  
“Look, Happy, I don’t want to be a bother to you.”

  
“You’re not a bother – normally.”

  
She was kind of teasing, but Toby didn’t laugh, and she realized she was glad he didn’t take the opportunity to turn the moment into a joke.

  
"I don't want..." Toby took a deep breath. "I don't want you to feel like you're trapped."

  
Happy stared at the television without seeing the characters move across the screen. They had never really talked about her freak out; she didn't like to think about it. It hadn't really occurred to her – even though it probably should have – that Toby had analyzed the situation and come up with a (very annoyingly) correct assumption about the cause of her panic.

  
"I don't feel trapped."

  
She mimicked his words. It was less uncomfortable, somehow, if she did nothing but pick the phrases she liked out of his speech and repeat them.

  
"It's just that sometimes I notice that you want me to leave, and then I start to wonder if there are times that I don't notice that you want me to leave."

  
Happy opened her mouth but paused. She couldn't use his words here; she'd have to think of her own. It required pushing against the knot on her throat that was trying to keep everything locked up.

  
"You're normally pretty good at knowing when I want you to leave."

  
Toby sighed. “Do you recognize what mood you’re in when you’re in it?”

  
“Yes.”

  
“Then what if you tell me what mood you’re in, and we can work around that?”

  
“What would that do?”

  
“That would make it possible for me to leave you alone when you want to be left alone, sweetheart.”

  
Happy nodded.

  
“Alright, good talk.” Toby laid his head back on the sofa, content.

  
Happy had trouble focusing on the movie for a while; she was trying to process what had just happened. It hadn’t really occurred to her that these kinds of conversations could lead to any sort of positive change. No one before Toby had ever taken the time to ask her about her feelings like that, to work around her wishes. Eventually, she leaned over and kissed his shoulder.

  
“Hey doc?”

  
“Yeah?”

  
“I love you.”


	17. Chapter 17

The team stood at the base of an old water tower just outside the heart of downtown LA. It had been one of those missions – something went wrong at every turn. Cabe and Sylvester had both almost died today, and the job wasn't over yet. There was a bomb strapped to the top of the tower with enough explosives to wipe out millions of people.

  
Walter spoke up. "Someone needs to go up there and disable the bomb in the next ninety seconds, or this whole city is going to go up in smoke."

  
"I'll do it. I'm the most expendable," Cabe offered. The sentence had almost become his mantra.

  
"Sly," Walter said before the Homeland agent started climbing. "How much extra weight can the structure hold?"

  
Sylvester started rattling off calculations before concluding, "118 pounds."

  
Cabe shook his head.

  
"I weight 115," Happy said, and moved to climb up the structure.

  
Toby put an arm out to stop her. "Whoa, hold on. Your leg’s still healing. You’d never make it up in time. And even if you could, that tower's gotta be older than all of us combined. Look at the rust on the bottom beams. It's not safe to go up."

  
"City-destroying bombs are also not safe. Besides, Sly did the calculations. The structure will hold and unless anyone else weighs less than 118 pounds” – she paused and looked around, but no one spoke up – “I’m our only shot.”

  
"Wait," Toby said. "What's the margin of error on that calculation, Sly?"

  
"I’d say two percent. Depends on the extent of the rust on the bottom."

  
"Two percent? So it might hold as few as 92 pounds?"

  
"Well, mathematically speaking..."

  
Toby turned to Happy. "You can't go. You could die."

  
"And if I don't go, we all _definitely_ die."

  
Before Toby could stop her, she started climbing. Despite the pain Toby knew she must be feeling in her left leg, she moved quickly – which was good, considering they were down to about forty seconds until detonation.

  
Happy reached the top and went out of sight just as Sylvester started the ten-second count down. When he stuttered out “one”, everyone braced for an explosion, but nothing happened.

  
"She disarmed the bomb," Walter breathed.

  
Paige smiled with relief and Cave went to pat Walter on the back when a horrible screeching sound hit their ears.

  
"The tower's falling! Everyone move!" Cabe shouted.

  
Toby stood still, staring up at the top of the structure where Happy had disappeared. Walter had to drag him behind Cabe's SUV for cover.

  
For two minutes, no one could see through the dust that the collapse had kicked up. They all crouched together, coughing and not bearing to think of what was on the other side of the car.

  
When the dust cleared, Toby was the first to leap up.

  
"Happy! Happy!" He called her name desperately, climbing across the debris to look for her. It was obviously useless; you didn't need a medical degree to know that no one could survive that fall. Soon, Toby let his screaming fade to talking, fade to whispering, fade to silence.

  
For a minute, no one spoke, and Toby felt his psyche balancing precariously, as if on a seesaw. He almost fell into despair – he could feel the sobs coming up in this throat – but, for some reason, his mind slipped the other way, into uncontrollable rage.

  
_"Sylvester."_ The word came out with more malice than Toby would have believed himself capable of. He walked over to the mathematician, fire in his eyes. "You said 118 pounds."

  
Sylvester already had tears welling in his eyes. "Two percent error. There was a two percent error," he whispered.

  
Toby leapt for him and grabbed his shirt. " _You said 118 pounds_."

  
Cabe grabbed Toby shoulders and jerked him backwards. "Hey kid, calm down. It's not his fault."

  
"Not his fault?" Toby knew Cabe was right, knew he was overreacting, displacing his anger, but he couldn't think to do anything but shout. "Happy's _dead."_

  
At that, Sylvester let out a muffled cry. Paige leaned her head into Walter's chest, and Walter wrapped his arms around her.

  
"Happy's dead," Toby repeated. The words washed over him until his mind could comprehend nothing else. "She's dead. _Dead."_

  
Cabe pulled him into a hug just as he started to sob.

* * *

They stayed like that, huddled together, all crying, for ten minutes, until the fire department arrived. Cabe immediately went into all-business-agent mode, reporting what had happened. The rest of the team stood dazedly, not knowing what to do until the paramedics insisted on looking everyone over. A young blonde woman checked on Toby. He stared straight ahead, completely ignoring her attempts at small talk, while she poked and prodded and examined him.

  
He was fine. He knew that. Physically, he was fine.

  
_But Happy was somewhere underneath that pile of rubble..._

  
He shook his head to clear it. He couldn't think about that, not now. It hurt too much.

  
And in that moment, he knew he was going to go home and gamble. As soon as the examinations and the reports and the paperwork were all done, he was going to find the closest casino with a bar and drink scotch at the poker table until he passed out or lost his car or both.

  
He had lost all motivation not to gamble.

  
That thought hurt less than the thought of Happy's tiny body, crushed and bloody and broken, a few hundred feet away from him, so he stuck with it. He imagined the smoky room, the other players, the waxy cards. He imagined drinking until he forgot why he was there, what his name was, that he had ever known someone as incredible as Happy.

  
A delicious sort of numbness spread over him, the same kind of numbness that had made him forget about his mom's manic episodes and his dad's abandonment and everything else in his mess of a childhood. It was the search of this numbness that had landed him in so many dead-beat motels, nothing to his name but a pile of debt, burning pay checks as soon as he got them and bridges as soon as he made them. Eventually, he got hooked on the endorphin rush of the big wins, sure, but it had all started here, with an effort to numb pain.

  
The agony inside him was almost deadened enough for him to talk to the police officer who was trying to take his statement when he saw movement out of the corner of his eye. He glanced up to see a figure coming from the tree line.

  
He honestly thought it was a ghost until she came up and wrapped him in a tight hug.

  
"Happy," he managed to get out, despite his sobs. "How..."

  
He heard but did not register what came out of Happy's mouth next: complicated jargon about angular velocity and projectile motion and the strength of the branches on cedar trees.

  
He pushed her to arm’s length and looked her over. There was a small scrape above her left eye, and he vaguely remembered that she was limping a little when she ran towards him, but she was alive. The doctor inside of him wanted to give her a full examination, to look over every inch of her until he could convince himself that she was real, she was here, she was safe. But, for now, he just pulled her against him again, pressing one hand to the back of her head and the other to the small of her back.

  
Paige caught sight of them and ran over, tears of disbelief clouding her sight. The entire team soon came as well, and they passed Happy through a dizzying line of hugs and _thank God_ s. As soon as possible, though, Toby grabbed her again and held her tight, needing to feel her breath on his cheek and hear her heart beating softly.

  
For the entire mission wrap-up – paramedic check-ups, debriefs, statements to the police – Toby didn't let go of Happy. When they were finally cleared to go, Toby and Happy sat in the back of Cabe's car together, her head on his shoulder.

  
Once they got to the garage, Walter turned around in the passenger seat. Toby could tell that he wanted to interrogate Happy, to figure out how on earth she escaped the water tower collapse, but – God bless him – he told everyone to go home.

  
"We'll regroup in the morning, okay? I think we all need some rest."

  
Everyone nodded and started climbing out of the SUV. That morning – had it only been hours ago? – Toby and Happy had come to work together, and now they walked to her truck wordlessly, holding hands.

  
Happy drove them to her apartment; they both understood without speaking that Toby would sleep there tonight.

  
It wasn't until they were on her living room sofa that the silence was broken.

  
"Happy," Toby breathed, "I was so scared."

  
She nodded. "Yeah, that was..." She shook her head.

  
He could tell she didn't really understand what he felt. They'd each be close to death before – they'd nearly succumbed to hypothermia wrapped in each other's arms, she'd narrowly escaped a submarine explosion, he'd literary suffocated while she watched helplessly – but this was different. Even her car accident hadn't done to him what this had. For nearly an entire half hour, he'd truly believed that she was gone. He'd started – barely started, but started – the process of understanding the magnitude of her death.  
For her, it was just another mission-gone-wrong, but for him, it was a glimpse into his life when the next _almost_ wasn't an almost.

  
He opened his mouth to explain, to make her understand the torture he had felt for those thirty minutes, but – for once – he couldn't find any words. She might not be able to understand, he realized; this might be something you had to feel first-hand. And, beyond that, he didn't _want_ her to understand. He didn't want her to feel what he had felt.

  
"Happy, I love you."

  
She leaned against him. She still didn't say it back automatically. Her _I love yo_ us were still rare, little bits of adoration bestowed upon him occasionally. Sometimes, he longed for her to express herself the way he did – blatant, unashamed, totally open – but, more often, now, he thought of her _I love you_ s as signs of her feelings overflowing some nearly-impenetrable, foster-care-built container. He liked to wonder what had made them come about, what had been able to break through her hard façade.

  
He pressed his lips to her forehead.

  
"Happy Quinn, will you move in with me?"

  
She looked at him, eyebrows raised.

  
“Doc, I think that might be the adrenaline talking.”

  
He shook his head. “No, Hap. Today…” He paused to take a deep breath. “I thought you were gone. I really thought you were _gone._ And I realized that – what we do – that could happen to either of us. Like, it could _really_ happen. And I… I don’t want to waste any more time. I want to be with you as much as I possibly can.” He put his hands up in front of him and closed his eyes, trying to figure out the best way to word his thoughts. “And I don’t want you to feel trapped, Hap. Hell, if we move in together on the condition that you can kick me to Sylvester’s sofa whenever you want, I’m fine with that. I just want to _be_ with you.”

  
He looked at Happy, trying to read her face. He saw doubt and confusion and a little bit of fear. But he didn’t see panic; he didn’t see her shutting down.

  
“Toby, I…” she started, and he was sure she was going to say no.

  
But instead, she murmured, “Okay.”

  
His eyes widened. “Really?”

  
A grin spread over her face. “Yeah.”

  
And suddenly they were both laughing and crying and talking all at once. Tomorrow, they’d sort out the where and when and how, but for now, they just sat there, holding each other, consumed by excitement, until Toby led Happy into the shower to get the water-tower-collapse dust out of her long hair.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! Thanks to everyone who has been keeping up with this fic. Every time I get an email saying that someone has left a comment, it makes me so happy :) 
> 
> In light of the Season Two finale, I want to say: this fic is cannon-complacent as of 2x21. Happy’s secret marriage is not part of the cannon of this fic.

Rain was falling aggressively from the sky, quenching the scorched earth that was so used to perpetual drought. Soon, the ground would become saturated and phones would start buzzing with flash-flood and mud-slide warnings. Southern Californians spent a lot of time worrying about ever-shrinking water supplies, and, while Toby would concede that that was a serious issue, it didn’t take much rain to remind everyone that the region wasn’t exactly built to be wet.

  
Toby blinked twice to bring himself back to the present. This wasn’t the place for meteorological musings; he was supposed to be listening to Patricia talk about how it felt to make it five years sober. But the sound of the storm attacking the windows of the church reminded him of that Christmas where the dam almost burst, which reminded him of his second-ever kiss with Happy, which reminded him of all the boxes currently strewn throughout her apartment – because he’d asked her to move in and by some act of God she’d actually said _yes_ – and all of that combined to make him a seriously unfocused addict.

  
Patricia was finishing now, and Toby realized he didn’t have a single clue what she’d said. If he put his mind to it, he could probably piece together the story – a skill he’d honed in college, when his young trains-of-thought derailed from boring lectures for anything and everything – but he didn’t bother looking for the motivation to do so. This wasn’t college, he reminded himself; there were no egocentric professors who enjoyed embarrassing daydreaming students here.

  
Patricia took her seat. It was a relatively small meeting – normally about fifteen people came. They all sat in a circle, facing each other; people simply stood where they were to share. The intimacy somehow made Toby’s absent-mindedness feel more damning. He repositioned himself, hoping a change in blood flow would help him concentrate.

  
“You know, I don’t think we’ve heard from Toby in a while,” Phil said. Toby shot him a glance, expecting to see a smug look on the man’s face, the same look he would see when his half-friends in high school would volunteer him to give an answer they knew he didn’t have. But he saw nothing but earnestness in Phil.

  
“Toby? Do you have anything you’d like to share?” Helen, the meeting secretary, asked.

  
Toby didn’t normally participate much at the meetings; GA-goers spoke in a language of addict clichés that he’d grown tired of in med school. But, for the past week, throughout the excitement of the planning and shopping and packing that goes along with moving in with the love of your life, he’d felt a hint of unhappiness. And, being the psychiatrist that he was, he was pretty sure he knew why.

  
“Yeah, sure, I’ll go.” He stood up slowly, noting the slight look of surprise on some of the others’ faces.

  
There was something absolutely liberating about sharing here. Even among Scorpion, Toby had a uniquely shady past. Unlike the other misguided geniuses, some of the worst parts of his life were unequivocally his fault, and, because of that, there were years’ worth of stories that he didn’t tell the team. But, in this room, he wasn’t The Criminal – he couldn’t be, because there was always someone here more fucked up than he.

   
All at once, standing up in front of twelve recovering addicts, Toby was hit with a wave of gratitude.

   
“Hi. I’m Toby, and I’m an addict.”

   
He paused for the chorus of _hi, Toby_ s.

  
“So, as some of you know, I work as a contractor for the Department of Homeland Security. Some of the stuff I do gets pretty dangerous. My girlfriend, she works with me. We’re on all the same assignments.”

  
Something about this meeting, this unassuming church basement and eclectic group of people, made Toby want to take down his better-educated-than-thou veneer. Here, his ideas came out in small words tied together with simple syntax. He’d split infinitives and leave modifiers dangling over a precipice of unselfconsciousness, and sometimes an eyebrow would raise just enough for him to know his mistakes were caught, but the brow would almost immediately fall again into completely-uncritical listening. When he spoke here, Toby could feel degree after degree – layers of education that he normally wielded like shields – fall off his psyche until he was nothing but a man with a gambling problem looking for help.

  
He didn’t enjoy this same kind of freedom in many other places – with Happy, who he knew saw right through his erudite babbling, and maybe Paige on a good day, but that was about it. And meetings had the added bonus of a complete lack of people to report any of his dangling participles to Walter.

  
“The other day, we were working on that terrorist threat from the Swedish organization.” Toby saw some eyes widen, and he imagined the thoughts flashing through the circle of heads: _is he important enough to work on that?_ But no one spoke – no cross-talk.

  
“It was a complicated case, but basically my girlfriend had to climb a really unstable water tower. And, while she was on it, it collapsed, and I thought” – he paused, voice catching in his throat – “I thought she died. I really thought she was dead, for about half an hour. And when I realized that she was gone – or, at least, that I thought she was gone – I decided I was going to gamble. That was it, I was done with my sobriety; as soon as the paramedics had finished checking me out I was going to find the nearest casino and just go at it.”

  
Toby looked around and was almost surprised to see some nods. He heard things at meetings that resonated with him pretty often, but it was always moving to know that even a story like this – a story that no one could top at even the most exotic of parties – found a way to affect the other addicts.

  
“And then I found out my girlfriend had survived – she was fine, actually, miraculously enough. And we went home and I didn’t gamble and it was fine. But just… knowing that my sobriety is so fragile like that… It, it sucks.”

  
He nodded slightly to himself and then sat down.

  
He spent the rest of the meeting thinking over what he had said. He felt less guilty about not paying attention if his thoughts were consumed by his gambling problems rather than the weather, and his statement interested him. Even being so tuned-in to his own psychological pathology, he hadn’t realized how much this thought had been weighing on him until it came out, pulling some nasty emotions up with it.

  
When they finished reciting the serenity prayer, Toby got up to leave, not feeling up to mingling. Just as he was opening to door to the stairs, though, Phil caught his arm.

  
“Hey, Toby, you in a rush to go?”

  
Toby had to resist the urge to say yes.

  
“No, I can stick around for a minute. Why?”

  
“I just wanted to talk to you about what you shared today.”

  
“Oh?”

  
Normally, at this point in a conversation, Toby’s mind would immediately start predicting what the other person would say next, often with exceptional accuracy. But tonight, under the patter of rain and surrounded by open-minded acceptance, his inner psychic lay dormant.

  
“Yeah, I uh… I’ve been where you are before. Not exactly, of course. I mean, I don’t work for Homeland or anything. But” – Phil pulled the nearest chair over and sat down; Toby followed suit – “I’ve had a similar thing happen to me.”

  
“Mm?”

  
“Back when I was living in Boulder, I had this job.”

  
“Working at that insurance company?”

  
“Yeah – how’d you know?”

  
“I remember from that first time we got coffee.”

  
“Oh, right, I forgot about that. Yeah, it was a pretty nice job. My boss was great, I loved my coworkers, it paid well, we even had little office parties every Friday. I was in accounting, and I’ve always been good with numbers, so I liked the work, too.”

  
Toby could hear Walter snort at the thought of someone like Phil being “good with numbers”, but he didn’t say anything.

  
“And a big part of the reason that I wasn’t gambling at that point was because I knew if I started it would get bad quickly, and then before I knew it I’d lose my job. That thought… it got me through a lot of rough nights, you know? And then our company got bought out and I got laid off.”

  
“I’m sorry,” Toby said, a beat too late. Despite all the time he’d spent studying non-geniuses, he quickly forgot their need for empathy when he was tired.

  
Phil waved him off. “I mean, I was devastated at the time. And I was so sure I was going to gamble again. I packed up the stuff from my desk and got into my car and went out driving to find the closest casino – just like you said.”

  
“And then what happened?”

  
“I passed the community center where I went to meetings, and I remembered there was a lunchtime meeting for the nine-to-five crowd, so I went in.”

  
Toby couldn’t help but remember his run-in with Manny the mechanic, which saved him from his last almost-relapse.

  
“And then…”

  
“I met some people there and I shared what had happened. And they helped me. So I thought I’d tell you what they told me, in case you can get anything out of it.”

  
Toby looked at him blankly.

  
“Look, Toby. I get it that you love your girlfriend – and hey, I’m happy for you that you found someone to be with. But at the end of the day, are you not worth recovering for? If your girlfriend packs up and leaves or you break up or – God forbid – something happens to her, are you then worthless? You’re a person too, Toby, and, from what I know about you, you’re a pretty damn good one.”

  
Phil stood up. “Just keep that in mind, you know, next time things take a turn for the worse and you’re thinking about slinking off to the nearest card table.”

  
Toby nodded. Phil stood in front of him for a minute, as if expecting him to speak, but then quipped a goodbye and walked away. Toby sat still while the small group around him chatted; at one point, Helen tried to bring him into her conversation with her sponsee, but he politely excused himself as soon as he could and made his way out through the rainy night to the parking lot.


	19. Chapter 19

Once inside his car, Toby put the keys in the ignition but did not turn them. Instead, he sat staring out the windshield at the road in front of him. The rain had eased to a soft drizzle that reflected the lights from the streetlamps almost whimsically. There wasn’t much foot traffic – any precipitation immediately sent all of LA inside – but he could see into the restaurant across the street, where happy diners ate and talked and laughed.

  
_Are you not worth recovering for?_

  
For years, Toby had drowned himself in destructive behavior. He’d found himself a seat at every legal poker table in New York, and most of the illegal ones as well. He’d gambled away everything, burning paychecks as soon as he got them and bridges as soon as he made them. He’d driven away friends, colleagues, his fiancée. And, even when he was offered a job that included a change of scenery and a rare opportunity to study a group of geniuses, he didn’t stop; he just slowed down.

  
Then Happy had showed up and, in a miracle he would never understand, allowed him to love her, but she’d been scared by the gambling. And that accomplished what broken fingers, a broken engagement, a broken life could not: it made him quit.

  
Was he worth recovering for? How could he be, when the only thing that made him even try to quit was a girl that would always be too good for him?

  
Thoughts started spinning in his head like a swarm of wasps. He pressed his fists to his eyes, but that didn’t stop the memories from coming up.

  
Suddenly, he was back to six years old, and his mother was drunk and screaming and his dad was ignoring her, watching some stupid game show. His mom took a beer bottle and smashed it into the television set, shattering glass all over the living room floor. His dad got up wordlessly and walked outside. He followed, little knees shaking with fear. When his dad got into the car, he climbed into the passenger seat. His dad didn’t say anything to him – he used to think that someone somewhere allotted a set number of words per marriage, and that his mom sucked almost all of them up, leaving his dad with only a few _buck up, son_ s to use sparingly.

  
They rode together silently until they pulled into the parking lot of a brilliantly lit building. The casino security guard eyed his dad suspiciously when he showed up with a kindergartener but let them both in. He spent the night watching his father play hand after hand. Whenever he won a round, he’d say something like _there it is_ or _that’s how you do it_. Toby held onto these words, in awe of a game that could make his father speak so much.

  
And then he was twelve, and he got home from a high school party – the only one he’d ever been invited to – where his classmates had made him take shots until he threw up just so they could laugh. He wanted more than anything for his father to be angry when he smelled the whiskey on his son’s breath, for him to yell at him or slap him or _something._ But the old man just grunted when Toby walked in, half-drunk and covered in vomit.

  
Toby walked up to the landline, flipped through the phonebook, called the shadiest guy he could think of, a neighbor who was five years older, and asked if he knew of any poker games in the area. And the neighbor had laughed at first, but when he realized that Toby was serious, he’d given him a list a names. Toby hung the list up in his room, kept it long after all those hustlers were gone, a shrine to hating his father.

  
And then he was twenty-six, and he was head-over-heels in love with Amy, the kind of love that can only come from being young and stupid and invincible. It was one of those days when the late-night game had crawled into the early morning and he arrived back home around noon. He found Quincy at their apartment helping Amy pack a suitcase. 

 

At first he was mad, a really intense sort of anger that seemed to require immediate violence to quell. But then, almost instantaneously, the anger faded to sadness, which faded to numbness. Amy left with her suitcase and her suitor and he sat down on the sofa and he realized he was just like his dad. And then he went back out to find another poker game.

  
There were so many of these memories, times where his life tilted sideways and he fell right into a casino. There were other memories, too – times where he stitched up a bleeding child or helped his mother recover from the stomach flu or won enough money to cover his next tuition payment. But they were so small and far apart, so easily overshadowed by all his gambling and his screw-ups.

  
Tears were dripping down his cheeks and tickling his chin. He dug furiously through his glove compartment, rifling through old parking stubs and ketchup packets, until he found a napkin. The paper felt rough on his stubbly skin, which, in his current state, annoyed him much more than it should have. Why didn't he have any tissues?

  
His phone rang then, and Happy's picture flashed across the screen. He took two deep breaths, letting the air flood his lungs and slow his heart, trying to calm himself enough to be able to talk, before answering the call.

  
"Hello?" He was impressed with the evenness of his voice.

  
"Hey, Toby, are you okay?"

  
“’Course I am, sweetheart. What's up?"

  
"I just knew your meeting ended about forty-five minutes ago. I wanted to make sure you were alright."

  
Toby had to pause to make sure he didn't start crying again. "I'm fine, Hap. Just got caught up talking to some people. I'm about to leave the church now."

  
"Okay. I'll see you soon." And, maybe because she detected a hint of something in his voice, she added, "I love you."

  
"I love you too, Happy."

  
The line went dead, and Toby was left alone in the silence. There were so many more memories inside of him, so many things he didn't want to talk about, but Happy's words hung in the air.

  
If someone like her could manage to love him, maybe he was worth recovering for, after all.


	20. Chapter 20

All in all, the whole moving process fell into place much quicker than expected. They decided to move into Toby’s apartment, as it was closer to the garage and slightly larger than Happy’s. Happy’s lease was almost up, anyway, and her landlady agreed to let her leave a month early.

  
As anyone would have anticipated, the major source of conflict in the move was consolidating two apartments’ worth of stuff into one. Some choices were easy – they threw out Toby’s tattered sofa in favor of Happy’s stylish one; Toby’s set of silverware took precedence over Happy’s mismatched collection – but other decisions started benign-yet-intense arguments. Someone always backed down eventually, though, and by the time moving day rolled around, Happy’s and Toby’s apartments were both looking anticipatorily sparse.

  
It was a particularly humid Tuesday when the whole team came over to help with the move. Cabe, Tim, Walter, and Toby, in an exhausting display of masculinity, insisted on loading all the heavy things into Happy’s truck. While they strained to maneuver the bulky furniture through the narrow halls of the building, the rest of the team formed an assembly line of sorts to get the smaller boxes into Cabe’s SUV.

  
About thirty minutes into the loading process, Sylvester and Ralph were called out into the hall to weigh in on whether Happy’s armoire would fit in the elevator. No one heard Happy call out that it definitely would – she’d managed to get the bulky wardrobe in there on her own when she moved in.

  
“Men,” Paige said in response to Happy’s exasperated sigh.

  
For some reason, Happy was reminded of that Linwood job from years ago, back before they’d met Paige and Ralph. She saw in her mind the flawless conveyance system she had built in record time, the perfection of it – and the speed with which the contractor, with the name _sugar,_ had degraded all her work into a womanly favor. She was, not for the first time, grateful that her team was no longer all-male.

  
“Imagine what they’d accomplish if they stopped thinking with their pride.”

  
Paige laughed.

  
The women walked out of the apartment together, each holding a box. They passed the men huddled by the elevator, talking animatedly about torque, and took the stairs down toward the parking lot.

  
“Paige, you lived with Drew for a while, right?” Happy said when they reached the car.

  
“Yeah, for a few years, before we split up. Why?”

  
Happy pursed her lips. “Did you ever get… sick of each other?”

  
Paige almost chuckled at the thought. _No, he was never home long enough for me to get sick of him_. But she held back her story of romantic frustration; she understood where Happy’s question was coming from.

  
“It’s hard, living with someone you care about. There are times when you get in each other’s hair and under each other’s feet and just want to escape for a while, you know?”  
Happy nodded without speaking.

  
“But it’s also great. You’ll fall into this routine. You get to eat breakfast together every morning. You get to go to bed every night and know that they’ll be there next to you when you wake up. You see each other when you’re sick and tired and messy, and there’s something really cool about that kind of openness.”

  
Happy didn’t looked convinced, so Paige reached out and squeezed her hand.

  
“And if you get sick of all of Toby’s jokes, my couch is always open.”

  
The mechanic smiled.

  
Paige waited a minute to see if Happy would reply; when she didn’t, the older woman said, “What are the odds they fit that armoire into the elevator?”

  
Happy laughed. “I’m going with slim to none.”

* * *

 It was a few hours before they were all at Toby’s apartment, surrounded by the boxes they’d unloaded from the cars. Toby and Happy turned down Paige’s offer to help them put everything away – they’d worked out a very specific plan for whose stuff went where, and it was easier just not to explain it – but everyone stuck around for pizza.

  
The team crammed themselves around a folding table in the living room. Cabe gave a sappy toast that made Happy and Walter groan, but Toby noticed his girlfriend’s eyes shining with laughter.

  
The conversation wove from the team’s latest case to a new project for Elia to Ralph’s robotics homework. When talk landed on partial derivatives, Paige jumped in to change the subject; she got lost once you passed high school math.

  
“Hey guys, I learned some interesting trivia about Walter the other day.”

  
All eyes went to Walter, who looked mystified. Paige smiled at him.

  
“Did you guys know Walter can juggle anything?”

  
"Not _anything,"_ the genius quickly qualified.

  
"You said, and I quote, 'power tools, lit torches, beach balls, things like that'. That counts as ‘anything’ in my book."

  
_"Lit torches?"_ Toby tried to picture his friend tossing fire up into the air.

  
"It's just math. Projectile motion – basic physics." Walter shrugged.

  
"Remember when you tried to throw that bean bag?" Happy raised her eyebrows.

  
“I told you, I didn’t account for the moment of inertia of the beans.”

  
“Well, alright, let’s see it,” Cabe said, sipping on his soda.

  
“What?”

  
“Give us a demonstration.”

  
“I saw some oranges in the kitchen-”

  
“Nope,” Happy cut in. She went over to one of the boxes by the hallway, opened it, and pulled out two hammers and a wrench. “Use these.”

  
Toby was immediately pleased. Here was his girlfriend – his stoic, no-nonsense girlfriend, a woman who got so wrapped up in projects that she often needed coaxing just to take a break to eat – participating in what could only be described as shenanigans. He loved it.

  
Walter, on the other hand, was shaking his head adamantly.

  
“Wait, wait, hold up.” Toby walked over to stand next to Happy. “Walt, I’ve known you for four years. How come you never let on that you knew how to juggle?”

  
“It’s not exactly the kind of thing that comes up in everyday conversation.”

  
“Are you kidding? I talk _all the tim_ e. There have definitely been opportunities to mention this.

  
“Name one.”

  
Happy put a hand on Toby’s chest, as if that would keep him from talking.

  
“Nuh-uh,” she said. “You’re just trying to change the subject, Walt.”

  
“Alright, Walter, you’re gonna juggle for us, end of story." Toby took one of the hammers from Happy and waved it around. "These are harmless, see? No fire to be found. The worst these'll give you is a broken toe."

  
“Or a fractured cranium. Plus, if I overshot the throw, I could tear a hole through your ceiling.”

  
“What, suddenly you’re not so sure of your calculations, Mr. One-Ninety-Seven?” Toby goaded.

  
“Come on, you have to do it now.” Happy had a devilish grin on her face.

  
Toby was ready to break out every psychological trick in the Harvard-subsidized book to get Walter to juggle for him, but then he caught sight of Sylvester, huddled over his pizza timidly, not participating in the conversation.

  
“Hey Sly,” he said quietly. “Come with me for a minute, yeah?”

  
The mathematician followed him into the kitchen silently. The rest of the team, so excited by the prospect of their leader juggling hammers, barely noticed their exit.

  
“Are you okay, buddy?”

  
Sylvester nodded. “Of course.”

  
“You seem a little… down.”

  
He shook his head. “No, I’m fine, really. Just maybe a little bit tired.”

  
Worry was starting to creep up on Sylvester’s face. Toby plucked an apple from the fruit bowl and turned it over in his hand, trying to calm his friend with nonchalance.

  
“Are you sure it doesn’t have anything to do with the mission from last week?”

  
Sylvester watched Toby fiddle with the apple as he replied, “What do you mean?”

  
“Well, the water tower calculations…”

  
On the morning following Happy’s not-death, as soon as Happy and Toby arrived at the garage, Sylvester had come up and apologized for his miscalculations. Happy – riding on the high of new plans with her boyfriend – had almost forgotten about the events of the day before, and she simply smiled at Sylvester and said it was fine. Then they went immediately into the moving announcement, which had prompted Paige to insist that they all go out for brunch to celebrate, and Sylvester’s remorse was lost in the merriment. But Toby had seen him shying away from the rest of the team for the past week.

  
“Toby, I don’t know how I messed those up. I’ve run over it a hundred times in my head and the calculations were sound, I swear. I mean, obviously they _weren’t_ sound – but I have no idea why.”

  
Toby realized Sylvester has misread the situation; the younger man was prepared for a fight.

  
“Sly, I’m sure your calculations were fine.”

  
“But the tower fell.”

  
“Look, you had to guess on some pretty integral variables, pardon the pun. Plus, I know for a fact Happy had a huge breakfast that morning – have you ever seen her put back pancakes? The human bodyweight can easily fluctuate five to seven pounds, depending on food and water intake. For all we know, Happy weighed a hundred twenty pounds that day.”

  
Sylvester bit his lip.

  
“She could have _died,_ Toby.”

  
“Trust me, Sly, I know. I love that woman more than anything else on this planet, you know that? I’d defend her to my death, if she weren’t so intimidating herself. But I’m standing here right now telling you that you did nothing wrong. Happy knew that climbing that tower might not be safe. If you had said it would only hold a hundred pounds, you think she still would’ve gone up?”

  
Sly was still staring intently at the apple, but his head shifted in the smallest of nods.

  
“Look, Sly, I want to tell you that I’m sorry.”

  
This made the mathematician look up in surprise. _“You’re_ sorry?”

  
“Yeah. I jumped down your throat when that water tower came down, and that wasn’t right of me, for all the reasons I just said. I was scared and sad and angry and I put all that on you. I’m sorry.”

  
Sylvester look of confusion slowly faded to resignation. With a disposition like his, he’d remember that altercation for a long time – the look of absolute fury in Toby’s eyes, the feeling of rough hands grasping his shirt. But the apology helped abate the guilt inside of him, if only a little.

  
Toby clapped him on the back.

  
“How about we go watch One-Ninety-Seven drop some wrenches, huh, bud?”

  
Sylvester smiled. “Sounds good to me.”


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for taking so long to update! It’s been a very busy couple of weeks. I’m on summer break from school now, though, so I’m hoping I’ll be able to update more frequently.

In reality, living together wasn’t that different for Happy and Toby than post-accident recovery had been. In those months following Happy’s crash, the pair had worked out a sort of domestic rhythm, an understanding of each other’s habits, which they maintained once they moved in together.

  
But even knowing that their day-to-day life, on paper, was pretty similar to what it had been while Happy was on bedrest, both Happy and Toby would agree that this felt different. Before, their time together had been temporary, a product of a unique circumstance brought on by a horrible injury. It was situation that had a built-in expiration date.

  
Now, though, they weren’t tied to each other by the odd relationship of wounded party and caregiver; they were together only because they wanted to be. There was no expiration date here; they could exist this way as long as they wished. It was infinitely different.

  
Toby, to his great credit, had taken on Happy’s vacillation between cuddly and distant like a challenge, and had mastered the art of leaving her alone when she asked, despite his ceaseless wish to be with her. And Happy – wary of kicking Toby out a space that was no longer her own, that was so decidedly _theirs_ – had become well-versed in the different coffee shops in the area. She had never thought of herself as a chill-in-a-coffee-shop kind of person, but they were a place that allowed you to sit undisturbed, alone in a room full of people. She actually grew to like them.

  
One evening, she came home from her second favorite coffee shop – her favorite closed early on Tuesdays – to find their apartment empty. A note on the kitchen counter in Toby’s scratchy hand gave an explanation: the psychiatrist was over at Sylvester’s house, helping to catch an apparently-very-intimidating bat. _Bats carry rabies, as Sly reminded me three times in our two-minute conversation_ , Toby had written. Happy smiled slightly before walking into their living room.

  
The room was different, since she had moved in. They’d thrown out Toby’s mess of a sofa, which was almost definitely older than both of them combined, and replaced his palm-frond curtains with slightly-less-ostentatious blue ones. Happy imagined the room as it had looked months ago, on the night she got into her accident. Her memory was clouded by the feelings of that evening, a funny mix of rage and guilt and betrayal, but she could still see in her mind the exposé of her boyfriend’s lack of interior decorating skills. She was glad that they had changed it, glad she didn’t have to associate her home with those noxious thoughts.

  
Boxes were still piled up in the corner of the living room from the move-in three weeks prior. Once things started to accumulate in an area that didn’t get much foot traffic, they had the tendency to stay there. Happy and Toby set aside a few hours every week to unpack, but, in that moment, something about the clutter gave Happy the gusto to organize it.

  
She went over and opened the box closest to her. It was full of clothes she never wore – a pair of jeans a size too big, a shirt she used to love that had gotten torn on a mission. A slip of dark jersey caught her eye: the dress she wore to that date Toby had slept through.

  
She pulled the dress out, holding the soft fabric in front of her. It was a nice dress, more expensive than most of the clothes she had. She’d gotten it years ago – she was honestly impressed that it still fit – a few months after getting her first job in a body shop. She was the only woman working there, but her coworkers’ wives hung around the shop. Happy, immediately excluded by the why’d-ya-hire-a-girl mechanics, had felt the intense need to fit in with the other women. They weren’t mean to her, not really, but they loved clothes in a way she – someone who felt most at home when covered in oil and grease – never would. The first time they invited her shopping, she’d dropped a paycheck and a half on the dress simply because one of the wives told her it made her look nice.

  
Happy shook her head at the memory before walking into the bedroom to hang the dress in their closet. Toby had the bizarre habit of keeping spare hangers stacked on the top shelf of the closet, rather than hanging them on the rod, so she had to jump up to reach them. She undershot the jump slightly – her left leg was still weak enough to make the conversation of distance to muscle power tricky – and ended up knocking over the box that held Toby’s dress shoes.

  
When she went to replace the box, she caught sight of a small green and blue bowl shoved to the back of the top shelf of the closet. She pulled it down, thinking it would fit perfectly on their living room coffee table, and accidentally dropped the four chips that were inside.

  
For a second, the coins registered in her mind as poker chips, and a wave of shock rippled through her. Then she picked up one to examine it and saw a small 30 written in plain block letters. It took her a second to realize what she was holding: a sobriety coin.

  
Happy knew of sobriety coins the same way that anyone knew of them: they were something addicts used, something very foreign. They were the kind of thing that existed in someone else’s world, something you might see the importance of and recognize if you were handed one, but that didn’t really affect you – in the realm of EpiPens and asthma inhalers.

  
_Toby has sobriety coins_. It really should have occurred to her earlier. After all, Toby had _sobriety_ – he was coming up on his one-year sober anniversary – so why not sobriety coins?

  
It was just that he never talked about his addiction. He didn’t mention gambling; if it ever came up on a mission, Happy would glance at him, but he would always look unfazed. The little quips he used to slip into conversation – jokes about his gambling problems – had all but disappeared. It had become easy to forget that his meetings, his breakfasts with Christine, his phone calls with other addicts were all part of a long process of recovery; they warped in Happy’s mind into simple social outings, ones she wasn’t invited to and didn’t want to attend, anyway.

  
Happy picked up all the coins and put them back into the bowl. Then she walked out into the living room and placed the bowl on their coffee table. It went well with the blue curtains, after all.

* * *

Toby got home a few hours later, full of funny bat-catching stories. It wasn’t until after a dinner of leftovers, when the pair sat down on the sofa to watch a movie and Toby kicked his feet up on the coffee table, that he noticed the addition to the living room decor.

  
“Hey, where’d you get that?” he asked, motioning to the bowl.

  
“I found it in your closet when I was putting some stuff away,” Happy said.

  
“And you put it out here?”

  
“I did.”

  
Toby was silent for a minute, and then simply said, “Thank you.”

  
He leaned over and kissed her cheek before settling back to watch Brad Pitt save the world from a zombie apocalypse.


	22. Chapter 22

It was normally shoes.

  
That was what Toby had heard men complain about, when they were a dozen hands into a poker game and everyone had had a few too many drinks: how many shoes their wives and girlfriends have. They were everywhere, overflowing out of closets and piled in hallways. You’d trip over them constantly and still more would arrive every week in shopping bags.

  
Toby had been ready, with Amy, to complain about all of her shoes. It seemed like a rite of passage, at least in the crowd he used to run with: get to the point in the relationship where you’re bitching about how many shoes your girl had. But, as the gambling got worse and he was home less and less, he found that he didn’t spend enough time around her shoes to be bothered by them.

  
And Happy, as it turned out, owned exactly four pairs of shoes: two pairs of combat boots, a set of nice heels, and a pair of sneakers. Even if he had wanted to complain about an excess of footwear, he wouldn’t have been able to; she had less shoes than he did.

  
Instead, Happy accumulated tools.

  
He hadn’t realized how many tools she owned until he had to help her pack them all up during the move. The sheer volume of metal was obscene; there were sanders and spanners and chisels and loppers and a whole manner of other things he had almost definitely never seen before. When he’d realized just how many tools she had, he’d thought maybe _that_ would give him something to complain about. But Happy kept them meticulously organized; they all somehow managed to fit on the bottom two shelves of their tiny linen closet.

  
Every so often, though, Happy would get the zeal to start a little project and tools would start cropping up across the apartment. Recently, she’d taken apart Toby’s alarm clock to fine-tune the escapement because, apparently, the clock was losing time, which was probably why a pair of pliers was resting on their coffee table, right next to the bowl of his sobriety chips.

  
Toby felt Happy accidentally pull out a few of his hairs and he grunted, more for dramatic effect than anything else.

  
“Hey, what’re you doing up there, Hap?”

  
“Sorry,” she muttered, lost in concentration.

  
Tomorrow would be their one-month anniversary of living together. Toby was planning a celebration – a _small_ celebration, because Happy insisted on not making a big deal out of the occasion – and he was supposed to be picking up a cake from the local bakery. But Paige had called just as he was walking out, saying that Ralph had lice, and Happy had insisted on checking Toby’s head. Which is how he came to be sitting on the floor of his living room at nine o’clock on a Thursday evening, back pushed up against the sofa, shaking his knee with boredom and staring at an incredibly small pair of pliers. Happy was seated on the couch behind him, her knees by his ears, running her hands gently through his hair.

  
“You sure you don’t need any pointers, honey? I am a doctor, after all.”

  
“Did they really waste time teaching you to check for lice at Harvard?”

  
“They prepare you for all medical emergencies, big and small.”

  
Happy chuckled. “Well, thanks for the offer, but I think I can handle it. You don’t spend fourteen years in foster care without learning how to spot nits.”

  
That thought hadn’t occurred to Toby before. “Did you get lice a lot, growing up?”

  
Happy scoffed. “About every six months, almost like clockwork. I have my cover-a-head-in-mayonnaise technique down to a tee.”

  
_“Mayonnaise?”_

  
“What, they didn’t teach you to do that at Harvard?”

  
“Try lice shampoo.”

  
“Yeah, that’s the snooty way of doing it. If you’re trying to delouse six kids on a schoolteacher’s budget, you use mayonnaise.”

  
Toby was silent for a minute, imagining Happy’s long hair covered in a sticky condiment.

  
“Don’t forget, you’re having drinks with my dad the day after tomorrow.”

  
“I won’t forget, Hap.” He tapped the side of his head. “Photographic memory up here.”

  
Happy kneed his shoulder. “Seriously. He wants to get to know you better.”

  
_I’m sure he’s more concerned with getting to know_ you _better._ “I’ll be there. Don’t worry.”

  
“Thanks. And I’m not seeing anything that looks like – what’s that?”

  
Happy’s deft fingers paused on the very top of Toby’s skull. His highly-educated brain immediately placed the location anatomically: right where the two parietal bones meet the frontal bone.

  
“What’s what?” he asked, even though he was pretty sure he knew what she was talking about.

  
“Do you have a scar right here?”

  
“Oh, yeah, I do,” he said, trying to sound casual.

  
“How have I never noticed it before?”

  
“I wear my hair longer on top to hide it.”

  
“What happened? How do you get a scar right smack-dab on top of your head?”

  
He shrugged, shoulders brushing Happy’s knees. “It was just something from when I was kid.”

  
Though he couldn’t see her face, he could imagine her look of incredulousness. He knew that his avoidance of elaborating on the subject would prick her interest.

  
“What, did you fall or something?”

  
“No...”

  
Happy slid down so she was seated on the floor next to him.

  
“Come on, Toby, what happened?”

  
She had a small, excited grin on her face, and for a moment Toby considered lying, making up some cute story about little-boy shenanigans, just so she would keep smiling like that.

  
Instead he laid his head back on the seat of the sofa so that he was staring at the ceiling and took a deep breath.

  
“When I was younger, I had this friend, Joey. Have I ever told you about him?”

  
Happy shook her head, still looking eager.

  
“We hung out a lot in elementary school. I’d go over to his house sometimes. His mom was super nice. She’d always make cookies for us. Every time I got home from Joey’s house, I’d tell my mom how great _his_ mom was, and I guess she started to feel jealous. One day I was going on and on about these brownies his mom and made us, and my mom, she just got mad. She told me to shut up and, when I didn’t, she grabbed me by my hair and bashed my head onto our dining room table. Knocked out my two front teeth.” He smiled sadly. “But they were baby teeth, so. And her fingernails dug into my scalp, which is how I got that scar.”

  
A look of horror had replaced Happy’s grin.

  
“Toby, I… I didn’t know…”

  
He patted her knee lightly. “It’s okay, Hap.”

  
She shook her head. “No, it’s really not.”

  
She stood up quickly. Toby twisted to watch her walk around the sofa and then disappear into the kitchen. A minute later, she came back with a bottle of scotch and two glasses.

  
“You know what, Toby?” she said as she opened the bottle and filled the glasses. “Our childhoods kind of sucked. Your dad took you gambling on Christmas and your mom bashed your head into a goddamn table and I didn’t even have any parents.” She passed him one of the glasses. “I propose a toast.”

  
“A toast?”

  
“No, not a toast. What’s the opposite a toast? Like, for a bad thing?”

  
“Um… an anti-toast?”

  
“Yeah, an anti-toast. I propose an anti-toast. To our childhoods. Let’s be glad they’re fucking over.”

  
In that moment, lukewarm glass of scotch in his hand, hair tousled from the lice check, Toby couldn’t do anything but laugh. An anti-toast was something so Toby-esque; it was exactly the kind of thing he would do in this situation. All at once, he was hit with the thought that he was so, so lucky to have found Scorpion, to have found Happy. He lifted his glass.

  
“An anti-toast, then. Fuck our childhoods.”

  
They clinked glasses and then each swallowed their drinks in one swift gulp.

  
“Oh,” Happy said after wiping a stray drop of scotch from her lip. “You don’t have lice, Doc.”

  
“Well, normally I would say that that calls for a toast. But you know what calls for an _anti_ -toast? _”_

  
“Mm?”

  
“Ralph has lice. And that sucks.”

  
Happy nodded, smiling. She poured two more glasses.

  
“Fuck lice,” she said.

  
“Fuck lice,” Toby repeated.

  
“You know what else sucks?” Happy said when they had both gulped down their second glass.

  
“What?”

  
“Walt’s making us work on our one-month living-together anniversary.”

  
“I thought you didn’t want to make it a big deal?”

  
“Still, it deserves an anti-toast.”

  
And so they went on, pouring drinks and cursing different inconveniences in their lives. Soon, the scotch bottle was empty and they were both closer to drunk than to tipsy.

  
After a few minutes of silence, Toby reached forward and grabbed the pliers, which were still sitting on the coffee table.

  
“You know, Hap, these are a lot more useful than shoes.”

  
“That doesn’t make any sense, Toby.”

  
He laughed. “You’re right.” He put the pliers back on the table, and then kissed Happy’s forehead.

  
Vaguely, in the way thoughts kind of hang in the back of a drunk mind, he knew he should check Happy’s head for lice as well. And he knew he should start to get worried about this drinking date with Patrick, about making sure to be on time and be funny and charming and generally give off the air of a good boyfriend. But, for now, he just leaned up against Happy, allowing himself to feel silly and drunk and perfectly content.


	23. Chapter 23

“What’re you having?”

  
“Uh, scotch, please.”

  
The bartender pulled down a thick bottle and poured a glass. She set it in front of Toby, who wrapped his hand around it gingerly, musing over the social effects of masculinity.

  
He wasn’t really a scotch kind of guy; he drank it at home because Happy liked it, but he almost always ordered Cosmos when they went out. Normally, he considered himself pretty impervious to the fears of getting “girly” drinks that paralyzed men like Cabe. But now, sitting beside his girlfriend’s father, palpable awkwardness between them, he’d found himself unable to order his usual froufrou cocktail.

  
Patrick, who was sipping a very manly whiskey on the rocks, didn’t seem much more eager about their meeting than Toby felt. The mechanic had set up the drinks date the week before; when Toby offered to invite Walter, Cabe, Tim, and Sylvester – make it a men’s night out – Patrick had refused. _Let’s just go, us two_ , he’d said.

  
Now, they sat next to each other in a quiet bar Patrick had picked out, a few miles from his shop. Toby had never been there before, but it seemed nice enough. Patrick was settled comfortably onto a barstool; it was clear he was a regular here. It was the first time Toby had seen him out of his normal grey jumpsuit; he had on a brown sweater that was a little too warm for the mild spring weather.

  
After about fifteen minutes of small talk, Patrick excused himself to the bathroom. Toby considered trying to strike up a conversation with the bartender, but she was off at the other end of the bar, chatting with someone, so he just sipped on his bitter scotch and waited.

  
When Patrick returned, a sort of resolve had taken over his aging features. He spoke as he sat back down.

  
“So Toby, I heard... I mean, Sylvester mentioned the other day that you are – or, I mean, used to be – or, that you had a gambling problem?”

  
The question took Toby by surprise; he honestly hadn’t seen it coming, but it was clear now that this was the reason Patrick had wanted to talk. Normally, Patrick’s motives weren’t particularly hard to discern, and Toby thought for a second that maybe he was slipping, losing his ability to read people. But it was an understandable mistake, not seeing that particular question written on the older man’s face; it was the kind of thing that would easily be hidden by the normal nervousness of having drinks with your daughter’s boyfriend.

  
Toby took a breath before responding, “I am an addict, yeah.”

  
He saw Patrick furrow his eyebrows, though he couldn’t tell if it was at the correction of tense or at the introduction of the word "addict". He would’ve guessed both.

  
“Have you... I mean, I thought – Sylvester said – did you kick the habit?”

  
“That’s not really–” Toby stopped midsentence.

  
_That’s not how it works_. That’s what he had been about say. Addictions don’t get "kicked", not in the way Patrick was talking about. For anyone who had been an active addict for as long as he had, it wasn’t just a get-yourself-to-stop-for-a-few-weeks-and-then-forget-about-it kind of deal, despite what seemed to be popular belief; it was a lifelong part of you.

  
Perhaps this was some sort of karmic punishment, a reprimand by fate, penalty for all the hurt he had caused as an addict. The juries of the universe had sentenced him to a life of explaining the peculiar, often-misrepresented nature of addictions to people.

  
“I’ve been sober for almost a year now.”

  
Patrick raised his eyebrows. “Sober? What does – I mean – what?”

  
Despite himself, Toby almost smiled. “Yeah, sober. That’s what we call it, when we’ve stopped gambling. Sobriety.”

  
“ ‘We’?”

  
“Addicts. People in Gambler’s Anonymous. Other gambling addicts call it sobriety, too, even those not in the program, but I mostly only know the ones in GA.”

  
“GA.” Patrick said the acronym slowly, like his tongue wasn’t built to put those two sounds next to each other. “So you know a lot of other addicts?”

  
“Some, yeah, from the program.”

  
“The program being GA?”

  
“Yeah.”

  
“And these other addicts, you… hang out with them?”

  
“Sometimes, yeah.”

  
Patrick nodded slightly before taking another sip of his whiskey. Toby saw apprehension in his eyes; no one liked finding out their daughter was dating a gambling addict.

  
“Why?”

  
Toby cocked his head. “Why what?”

  
“Why do you want to hang out with other addicts? Wouldn’t that just make you want to gamble more?”

  
_The fellowship_. That’s what it was called, talking to other addicts outside of meetings, relying on them to get through tough times. But Toby was definitely not telling Patrick that particular term; he didn’t need any Lord-of-the-Rings references coming into this already-difficult conversation.

  
“No, it doesn’t make me want to gamble. It helps, really. Some days...” Toby swallowed, choosing his words carefully. He didn’t want to freak Patrick out any more than the word “addict” already had. “In addiction recovery, there are just bad days sometimes. And when you talk to other addicts, it helps you realize that other people have gone through what you’re going through and they came out okay. It’s a good support network.”

  
Patrick was silent for a minute, turning his now-empty glass around in his hands.

  
“So there are ‘bad days’?”

  
Toby had to resist the urge to groan; of course _that_ was what Patrick had taken from what he said.

  
“Every so often, there are bad days, yes.” Toby found himself speaking slowly, enunciating his words a little too much, as if talking to a child. Patrick, staring fixedly at his glass, didn’t seem to notice.

  
“And what do you do on the bad days?”

  
“I mean, it’s not like I wake up screaming about gambling.” Though he had, more than once, shot ramrod-straight up in bed in the middle of the night, woken by gambling-related nightmares. “It’s just, there are days when I think about gambling a lot, and I find it hard to stop thinking about it. So I call my sponsor, or someone in the program, or I meditate, or I write in a journal. All those things help.”

  
Toby noticed that Patrick didn’t sneer at the idea of meditating or journaling, which he took to be a good sign. But, overall, he could tell the conversation was not going well.

  
“And what does Happy do, on those bad days?”

  
“I’m sorry?”

  
“Well, does she notice that you’re feeling bad? Does she try to help? Does she stay home from work to look after you or something?”

  
“Neither of us stay home from work.” Toby felt himself getting defensive and willed himself to calm down. “I think you might be thinking of these ‘bad days’ as a bigger deal than they are.”

  
“I’m just trying to look out for my little girl here, Toby.”

  
“I understand that, sir” – _You just called him sir, why did you call him sir? You’re alienating him_ ¬– “but I assure you, Happy’s fine.”

  
“I had a buddy once who liked to a drink a little too much and would come home and hit his girlfriend.”

  
Toby saw lines of worry around Patrick’s eyes. He had only recently reentered Happy’s life, and Toby could tell he was struggling with the urge to protect a woman who was so fiercely independent, so used to taking care of herself. It was a feeling with which Toby was not unfamiliar.

  
There was a way to handle this, a way to calm Patrick down and mend the rift that had opened up between them over the course of the evening. For some reason, though, the situation registered as an emergency in Toby’s mind, and he resorted to his normal emergency-handling protocol: act smart.

  
“Substance addictions like alcoholism, while pathologically and psychologically similar to behavior addictions, present a much different array of side effects.”

  
Patrick wrinkled his nose and shifted in his seat; Toby wanted to slump down on the bar in defeat. Pulling out the Harvard voice – the high-level vocab, the scholarly tone – was the fucked-up cherry on top of a very-poorly-handled conversation. He could tell Patrick was done talking, had made up an opinion of him that was just about as good as anyone’s opinion of an addict.

  
After a solid sixty seconds of agonizing silence, Patrick half-heartedly mentioned something about the baseball game that was playing on the TV across the room. Toby dug through his mind for a response – _what is it that people like to say about baseball games?_ – but, before he could come up with anything, Patrick started to get up.

  
“Toby, I – I think I should go.” He pulled out a twenty-dollar bill and dropped it on the counter. “I, uh, I’ll see you later.” He turned to go, but then looked back. “But hey, you be kind to my daughter, you understand?”

  
Toby nodded numbly. He watched Patrick weave his way through the cramped room and then push through the front door and disappear outside. Toby sighed.

  
Considering how good he was at analyzing people, it was amazing how bad he could be at talking to them.


	24. Chapter 24

Happy stood in the entrance to her father’s shop, waiting for him to notice her. It took a minute – he was absorbed in a hammering job – but when he did, a smile lit up his face.

  
“Happy,” he said warmly, coming over to hug her. She embraced him back, registering the familiar smells of sweat and motor oil.

  
“How are you doing?” Patrick asked, wiping his hands on a rag.

  
“Pretty good. How are you?"

  
“Oh, you know, hanging in there.” He placed the rag down on his workbench. “What do you I have to thank for your visit?”

  
“I found this…” She pulled a small bundle of cloth out of her bag, which she unfolded to reveal a delicate piece of metal.

  
“Don’t tell me,” Patrick said, smiling. “Is that a wastegate actuator for my Ford engine?”

  
Happy grinned, handing him the small part. “Yeah.”

  
“Where did you find this? I’ve been looking for it for weeks.”

  
“Tim apparently knows a guy. He got it for me.”

  
“I’ll have to remember to thank him next time I see him.”

  
They were silent for a minute as Patrick examined the actuator. Happy watched him, the expression on his face reminding her of the level of preoccupation that came over her own self when she worked.

  
It had been less than two years since he came back into her life. She still didn’t really know how to interact with him, how to deal with a father as an adult when she hadn’t had one as a child. There were days when she was angry at him, a really nasty kind of anger, the kind that made her not want to talk to him or anyone else, made her want to do nothing but hammer even the least-malleable metal into submission. So much had happened to her, and it all stemmed from his decision to give her up. She had spent years hating him, truly hating him, and it was hard to let go of that.

  
But then there were days when she saw an all-too-familiar mix of pain and self-hatred in him, and she realized that he, in his own way, understood what he had put her through. And she recognized the rareness of the opportunity to reconnect with him; he accepted her, understood her, in a way most of the team’s parents did not understand their own children.

  
Still, there was a pervasive awkwardness that wrapped itself around most of their interactions. Neither one of them was great at making conversation.

  
“So, Happy,” Patrick said, setting the actuator down on his workbench. “How’s your leg doing?”

  
“Good. I have a PT appointment tomorrow and hopefully” – almost without realizing it, she held her hands up and crossed her fingers theatrically; Toby was rubbing off on her – “it will be my last one.”

  
“Oh, that’s great. I know it’s been a long road, recovering from that accident. You still like that therapist, Jessie, is it?”

  
“Jessica. Yeah, she’s nice.”

  
“Just as long as she’s making sure you get better.”

  
“She is.” Happy paused, picking mindlessly at her nail polish. “So how did your drinks with Toby go the other day?”

  
Patrick shrugged nonchalantly, not meeting Happy’s eyes. “Fine. Why, did he say something?”

  
“No. He was kind of quiet when he got home, though.” Exceptionally quiet. In fact, he – very uncharacteristically – barely said a word the whole rest of the night. Happy couldn’t fathom why; she’d thought Patrick had just wanted to chat with Toby, connect with him. She couldn’t think of a reason that the meeting would have gone poorly enough to stop the ever-present flow of words that normally came out of her boyfriend’s mouth.

  
“Yeah, well, he’s… I guess I just don’t know him that well.”

  
Happy frowned. “What do you mean by that?”

  
Patrick glanced around the shop, as if making sure there was no one nearby to overhear what he said next. “You know he’s a gambling addict?”

  
He said it like it was some sort of huge secret; Happy almost laughed. The entire world knew Toby was a gambling addict. Up until he quit, he joked about it nearly constantly.

  
“I do, yeah – wait, how do _you_ know that?”

  
“Sylvester told me the other day, when I stopped by to wish Cabe a happy birthday.”

  
“Sly just randomly told you that Toby’s a gambling addict?”

  
“I mean, I asked how the kid was doing, ‘cause I hadn’t seen him a while, and Sylvester mentioned that he was going to a lot of breakfasts with his sponsor, so then he had to explain – but Happy, I think you’re missing the point.”

  
“Okay, what’s the point?”

  
“The point is addicts aren’t the kind of people you want to mess with.”

  
“ ‘Mess with’?”

  
“Look, the neighborhood I grew up in… I saw addicts do some terrible things to feed their addictions.”

  
“Hey, Dad, Toby isn’t some sort of lawless meth addict. He’s a _Harvard-trained psychiatrist_.” She couldn’t believe that she pulled the Harvard card here, in front of her father, but she felt the need to defend Toby and this was the best way she knew how. “There are a lot of recovering addicts out there in the world. I know it’s hard to believe, but, man, if you could meet his sponsor – she’s, like, the CEO of some pro-bono, fight-for-the-little-guy law firm. She’s been sober for, like, twelve years. Not all addicts are criminals.”

  
Patrick placed a hand on her shoulder. “Happy, I just don’t want to see you get hurt. You’ve been through so much.”

  
_And whose fault is that?_ Happy was surprised by the malice of the thought, and bit her lip.

  
“I know. But he’s a good guy, Dad. Really.”

  
Patrick sighed. “Okay. But if anything ever… goes wrong, you’ll call me, right?”

  
If something “went wrong”, her father would probably not be the first person she would turn to; really, a crisis would most likely find her in the garage, welding metal until her eyes glazed over. But she nodded anyway.

  
“Thanks, Happy.” Patrick pulled her in and kissed her forehead. “I worry about you, you know? Miss Homeland-agent-who-saves-the-world.”

  
Happy smiled slightly. “Don’t worry, Dad. I’ve got a lot of people looking out for me.” 


	25. Chapter 25

“How does that feel?”

  
Happy had to resist the primal urge to giggle; Jessica was pressing down on the soft skin right above her hip bone, apparently trying to gauge muscle growth or something like that, but it felt no more professional than when Toby got the urge to tickle her awake in the morning.

  
“Fine.”

  
“No soreness there?”

  
“No, not since a few weeks after I got my cast off.”

  
Jessica smiled. “Well, that’s good.”

  
It had been nearly eight months since her accident. She’d started off going to physical therapy every day, then three times a week, then once a week. Recently, Jessica had started dangling in front of her the idea of stopping PT altogether, with little mentions of how far she had come and how well she was healing at every session.

  
A month after she got her cast removed, she had started running again. At first Toby had insisted on coming with her, to make sure she didn’t hurt herself. Before the accident, Happy could have easily outpaced her does-digging-through-the-bed-covers-to-find-the-remote-count-as-exercise? boyfriend, but the weeks on bedrest had softened her leg muscles and weakened her lungs. For the first few days, she could barely keep up with Toby; her previously-semi-weekly five-k turned into a single, torturous mile. Soon, though, she got back her cardio endurance and started forcing Toby to work harder and harder to match her speed, until he decided that she didn’t need a chaperone. Now, her muscles were almost back to their pre-crash definition.

  
Her scars had started to fade as well; the one on her leg was now nothing more than a stubby pink line. She couldn’t see the one on her back, not without a mirror and a yoga-esque contortion exercise, but occasionally, when they lay together at night, Toby would slip his hand under her shirt and run his thumb gently over the mark on her left shoulder blade. A punctured lung is rarely life-threatening, or so he had told her. But some of her other injuries had tested the reaches of modern medicine -- and, ironically, those were the injuries that didn’t leave marks. So when Toby rubbed her scar, she thought of those injuries, the ones that might have killed her, in a different hospital, under the knife of a less-skilled surgeon. It was his way of reminding her to be careful, she thought; he was wordlessly saying to remember the proximity to death to which she had come before. He was telling her to watch that she did not get that close again.

  
“Well, Happy,” Jessica was saying. She picked up the clipboard she always brought to their sessions and scribbled something down. “I think I’m gonna go ahead and say that you don’t need to come to PT anymore.”

  
Happy’s eyes widened. She’d taken Jessica’s hints about stopping sessions as little treats, something to chew on but not take seriously, the same way she took Toby’s claims that he was going to buy a car that actually had air conditioning sometime soon.

  
“Really?”

  
Jessica smiled. “Really, truly.” She handed Happy a slip of paper. “Just take this out to the front desk and you’re all set.”

  
She started turning towards the door, but then stopped and stuck her hand out.

  
“It’s been a pleasure, Happy. Really. You’re one hell of a patient.”

  
Happy shook her hand, unable to think of a response other than “thank you”, and then watched her walk out the door that led into the back room of the office. She felt an odd sense of nostalgia as she paid her final bill with the secretary; an era of her life was ending. It wasn’t a pleasant era, or one she’d planned on going through, but she still felt a hint of sadness as she walked to her car.

  
Traffic was mercifully light on her way home, despite the fact that it was midday on a Saturday, and she walked through the front door to their apartment less than twenty minutes after leaving the PT office. Toby was in the living room, skimming through an article he was supposed to be peer reviewing.

  
“Hey,” he said cheerfully when he saw her. “How did PT go?”

  
“Fine. It was -- it was my last session.”

  
Toby’s eyes lit up. “Really? That’s great!” He set the article down on their coffee table and twisted so that he was facing her. “Want to celebrate? We could go to that sushi place you like.”

  
“No, I…” Happy ran her hand through her hair, trying to collect her thoughts, which had started going in a million directions. “I kind of just want to be alone right now.”  
Toby raised an eyebrow. “Alone mood?”

  
Happy nodded, not meeting his eye; even now, after months of them working with her periodic desire to be left alone, after finding a rhythm that had helped her cope with living with someone -- helped her _enjoy_ living with someone -- she was still off-put by what had become their code-word for _I want to be left alone_.

  
“Got it.” Toby jumped up and walked into the bedroom. Happy knew he’d appear a minute later, armed with his satchel and car keys, ready to head over to Sylvester’s apartment for a few hours while she decompressed. She wandered aimlessly into the hall, waiting for him to be gone.

  
There was a new frame up on their hallway wall, next to the pictures Toby had hung up of them and the team as soon as they moved it. It took Happy’s frazzled brain a second to recognize the drawing: her sketch of an engine Toby had found a few months prior.

  
“Hey Toby?” she called.

  
“Yeah, Hap?” He came out of their bedroom, satchel in tow.

  
“You hung up my picture?”

  
“Yeah.” He walked over and stood beside her. “It was in a box in our closet for a while. I decided it needed to be showcased a little bit more.”

  
“I never hang up the stuff I draw.”

  
“I know.” He shrugged. “I can take it down if you want. I just like looking at it, is all. It reminds me of you.”

  
Happy was silent for a moment, staring at the large piece of paper. The hall light hit it directly, causing a slight glare across the glass of the frame.

  
“I’ll be at Sly’s if you need me,” Toby said. He kissed her temple, and then slipped passed her. Happy called a mindless goodbye just as he shut the front door behind him.

  
She put a hand to her forehead. Something about the gesture -- keeping her picture, framing it, hanging it in their apartment -- was moving. It was mixing with her unexpected post-PT nostalgia, and she felt herself hanging on the verge of tears.

  
She shook her head. _I’m not going to cry because Toby hung up a drawing._ To clear her mind, she walked into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of water. Then she went into the living room and plopped down on the sofa, ready to watch some mindless television.

* * *

 “Sly, my favorite mathematician!”

  
“Hey Toby.” Sylvester moved aside so the psychiatrist could come into his apartment. “Did Happy kick you out again?”

  
Toby wrinkled his nose. “She doesn’t ‘kick me out’, Sly; she just likes to have some time to herself.”

  
Sylvester held his hands up in front of himself innocently. “Hey, I’m not complaining. We have to finish our Monopoly game, after all.”

  
Toby smiled. They had been working on the game for weeks; they’d go for a few hours at a time, normally when Happy asked to have the apartment to herself. Sylvester was nearly unbeatable -- he always kept a whiteboard next to him for his impeccable calculations -- but Toby, who had been playing Monopoly since he was six, had a tried-and-true strategy. They’d played before, but always gave up eventually, after numerous, probably-against-the-rules deals landed them in a never-ending cycle of riches to near-bankruptcy. Now, though, Paige and Walter had placed bets on who would win, so they were obligated to keep going.

  
Sylvester brought the Monopoly board out from the chest of drawers in his hallway. He began placing all the pieces back where they had been from memory.

  
“Happy’s done with PT,” Toby said. “Today was her last session.”

  
“Hey, that’s great,” Sylvester replied, carefully placing a hotel on Atlantic Avenue. “Does this mean she’s totally recovered?”

  
“She’ll probably go back to the doctor’s in a few weeks, just to make sure all her organs are still healing correctly, but yeah, she’s pretty much good-as-new.”

  
“Oh, I’m so glad. Watching her recover…” Sylvester shook his head. “Seeing her on crutches reminded me a lot of Megan, you know?”

  
Toby cocked his head. He hadn’t thought of the connection before. “Yeah?”

  
Sylvester nodded. “Yeah.”

  
It occurred to Toby that they were approaching the two-year anniversary of Megan’s death. On her birthday, they always had a small party, where Paige would cook Megan’s favorite casserole and Walter and Sly would tell stories about her until everyone’s eyes glazed over with love and sleepiness. But the first anniversary of her death had passed without mention, and no one had said anything thus far about the second.

  
“How are you doing, Sly?” Toby asked gently.

  
“Oh, you know. It’s hard sometimes. I’ll see a brunette woman from across the street, and I’ll be so sure it’s her, and then when I realize it’s not…” He shrugged. “I’ve been looking through a lot of our old pictures lately. And I’m trying to just be thankful, you know? To just be thankful for the time we had together. But it’s hard not to be sad.”

  
Toby nodded. “You know, it’s okay to be sad. You lost someone you love. You don’t have to pretend that it’s all okay. And if you ever want to talk about how it’s not okay, I’m always here to listen.”

  
Sylvester smiled slightly. “Thanks, Toby. But I’m okay. Really. I just want to beat you at this Monopoly game already.”

  
Toby grinned. “Don’t get too cocky, buddy. Hand me the dice. It was my turn, wasn’t it?”


	26. Chapter 26

Toby had seemed odd all day.

  
Happy first noticed it when Paige had said she needed to “get on top of Walter” to make sure he finished his reports on time, and she braced herself for Toby to point out the innuendo. Only, he didn’t. He just sat at his desk, staring blankly at a book. At first, Happy had just thought he was lost in whatever medical world the journal had taken him to, but, after another few glances over to him, she realized his eyes weren’t moving; he wasn’t actually reading.

  
Then, a few hours later, Walter had bragged about being unbeatable at Scrabble. Toby, rather than jumping down his throat with some unbearably-intellectual psychoanalysis and a challenge to play a game, just ignored him. It was the only time Happy had even seen Toby miss a chance to call Walter an egomaniac.

  
Now, the garage was empty. Toby had left early, claiming he wasn’t feeling well, and was going to meet Happy at home. Happy stared at a phone number on her computer screen, unable to find the strength to dial it. A voice inside her head -- birthed by years of not having a family, of looking after herself -- was saying that this felt too much like prying, like sticking her nose where it didn’t belong.

  
Her eyes fell on the picture on her desk of her and Toby. Paige took it a week after Toby quit gambling, before Happy’s car accident; he was wrapping her in an enthusiastic hug. She was half-heartedly pushing him away, but smiling at the camera.

  
She picked up her phone and dialed the number.

  
“Hello?”

  
“Christine?”

  
“Yes –- who is this?”

  
“This –- this is Happy, Toby’s girlfriend.”

  
“Oh, hi, Happy. Is everything alright?”

  
“I… I’m worried about Toby.”

  
She heard what sounded like a sigh on the other end of the line.

  
“You know what, Happy? So am I.”

* * *

Happy clenched the steering wheel with worry. Christine hadn’t told her many details -- sponsor/sponsee confidentiality prohibited that -- but the woman had said enough to confirm Happy’s fears that something was almost definitely wrong with Toby. As soon as she hung up the phone, she’d jumped in her car and started over to their apartment.

  
When she pulled into the parking lot, she saw a light on in the window that led to their living room, which she took as good sign. He probably wasn’t at a casino, at least.

  
It took her two minutes to get to their front door.

  
“Toby?” she called as she went in.

  
There was no one in the living room, but Toby’s car keys were on the kitchen counter. She went down the hall and glanced into their bedroom –- no one in the unmade bed.

  
There was a small sliver of light underneath the bathroom door. She walked over and knocked. There was no response, but she heard something inside. She pressed her ear to the door and registered the sound of whimpering reverberating through the wood.

  
“Toby?” she repeated, and the whimpering got slightly louder.

  
Her lock-picking kit was at the garage, but for a lock like this she didn’t really need it. She pulled a bobby pin out of her hair and had the door open in seconds.

  
Inside, Toby was on the floor, back against the far wall, pressed up against the side of the bathtub. She rushed to him, kneeled beside him, and grasped his hands.

  
“Toby? Toby, what’s wrong?”

  
He looked at her, eyes red and puffy from crying. “Happy, I was so close.”

  
“What?”

  
“I was _so close_.”

  
“Close to what? What are you talking about?”

  
“Nick –- he called me, and I was _so close_ to saying yes.”

  
“Nick? Who's Nick? Toby, I don’t understand.” She put her hand on his cheek, which was damp and sticky with tears.

  
He began to sob, and she pulled his head to her chest. She was never good as this, at being comforting, but she tried to think back to how he held her that night when he got back from France. She stroked his back and whispered softly in his ear, hoping it helped.

  
After ten minutes or so, Toby recovered enough to get the story out, through gasping sobs.

  
“Nick runs a… poker game. He called me this… morning. He had some rich guys coming… to his game and he wanted me to… come, too. He has one running… right now. And I almost said yes, Happy. I _almost said yes_.”

  
Her heart sank. Toby didn’t talk about his addiction to her much. Sometimes she’d see fragments, little scraps of pain in passing, revealing his daily effort to not gamble. But, for the most part, it was easy to forget how hard it this was for him. It was easy to think of his addiction as something that was decidedly in the past, something they didn’t have to deal with anymore. Not the kind of thing that would render her boyfriend a crying mess on the bathroom floor at eleven at night.

  
“But you didn’t say yes, did you?”

  
He shook his head pitifully. “I locked myself in here to stop myself from going.”

  
Happy hugged him tightly. She was beyond in-over-her-head here, but she tried to imagine what Christine might say if she were there. She had no idea what the standard GA response to a recovering-addict-almost-went-to-a-poker-game kind of situation was, but she decided guessing was better than saying nothing at all.

  
“Toby, that’s really good.”

  
He looked up at her with enough sadness to break her heart. _“Good?_ Happy, you don’t understand. I _almost went_. To a _poker game_.”

  
Words weren’t her thing, but she could tell he needed to hear her talk, hear her explain why he didn’t need to kill himself over an almost-relapse. She took a deep breath.

  
“You almost went _but you didn’t_. Every time you say no, it gets a little easier to say no the next time.” She’d never heard that before, but it sounded vaguely like something Christine would say. “You did exactly what you were supposed to do: you didn’t gamble.”

  
Toby shakes his head. “No, no, you don’t understand.”

  
“I understand that you are sitting here right now instead of at some back-alley poker table.”

  
They went back and forth like that for a while, Toby trying to convince Happy that he had done some terrible wrong and Happy denying it. When they both got too tired to talk anymore, Happy hoisted him up and walked him across the hall, and he collapsed in their bed. She found just enough energy to go over to their dresser and grab two pairs of sweatpants and two shirts for her and him to change into. Then she crawled under the covers next to him. He curled up beside her, still sniffling slightly.

  
She shifted so that she could wrap her arm around him. She found herself unconsciously grasping onto his shirt tightly, as if trying to hold him there, keep him from leaving her.


	27. Chapter 27

The next morning, Toby wasn’t in bed when Happy woke up. She shot upright when she realized this, terrified that he’d slipped off to a poker game sometime in the night, but then she heard him moving around in the kitchen. She rolled out of bed slowly and started to walk into the hallway.

  
He was making pancakes. He seemed to almost float around, showing absolutely no signs of his breakdown from the night before. When he saw Happy, he quickly came over to give her a good-morning forehead kiss.

  
“Hey, how’d you sleep?”

  
“Fine. You?”

  
“Good, thanks.” He brushed a lock of hair out of her face. She knew she probably looked like a mess -- her hair always looked wild in the morning if she didn’t put it up in a ponytail while she slept -- but she couldn’t find the energy to care.

  
“Thank you, for last night,” he said after a minute.

  
She had been wondering if he would bring it up.

  
“Are you okay?”

  
He nodded. “Some nights are just… bad. They always pass. I called Christine this morning. We talked about it. It’s all good.” He turned back towards the stove; that was all he was going to say.

  
Happy watched him cook, biting her lip. More than anything, she wanted to just enjoy this moment. Sunlight was coming in from the living room windows, warming the air and throwing a light-hearted glow across the apartment. Walter was out of town for some conference, and Paige had said the team didn’t need to come into work until after lunch, so they had hours to just lounge around the house and be lazy. And Toby’s pancakes smelled _so good_ \-- a stack of finished ones, perfectly golden, sat on a plate by the stove, reminding her that she hadn’t eaten since her late lunch the day before.

  
But her father’s words were swimming in her head. _I saw addicts do some terrible things._ Of course, Patrick had probably been thinking more along the lines of robbing liquor stores than hiding in bathrooms, but the threat of Toby relapsing brought up the idea of instability, whispers of _he could abandon you_ , and that freaked Happy out more than any petty-theft criminal record could.

  
She took a breath.

  
“Toby, I think we should talk about this.”

  
He turned around to look at her with a goofy kind of disbelief on his face. “What? Happy Quinn wants to _talk_ about something? How--”

  
“Toby, please,” she interrupted. He sobered immediately when he picked up on the seriousness of her tone.

  
He slid one last pancake onto the plate, turned off the stove, and came to stand across the kitchen counter from her.

  
“Okay. What’s up?”

  
In that moment, she found herself envying Toby’s verboseness, the effortlessness with which he could say whatever he was thinking. Words did not come easy to her -- and normally that was okay, between them. He would do his Harvard-trained-psychiatrist bit, figure out what she was thinking when he needed to, and they worked their problems out that way. But now, _she_ was initiating it; _she_ was the one who needed to speak, needed to know what was going on in his head and show him what was going on in her own. The role reversal was so hard. There was so much inside of her, so many thoughts that wouldn’t come out. Each syllable exiting her mouth required exertion.

  
“I didn’t realize how hard it was for you, not gambling.”

  
“It’s not really hard -- I mean, it’s hard, but it’s not _that_ hard. I’m going to meetings. I’m handling it. I’m good. Really.”

  
“Toby, last night I found you literally curled up on the floor crying. I don’t really think that qualifies as ‘handling it’.”

  
He nodded. “Addiction’s a tricky thing, psychologically speaking, Hap. There are good days and bad days, and the bad days get ugly sometimes.” He looked at her, eyebrows furrowed. “Did it scare you, last night? Because additions can be scary. I would understand.”

  
“Toby, have you forgotten what we do for a living? ‘Scary’ isn’t really the word I would use to describe comforting my crying boyfriend.” She sighed. “It’s just -- I forget sometimes, you know that? There are days when I honestly don’t remember that you’re an addict. Last week, I was watching TV and a commercial came on for that new casino that’s opening on Yellowspring Street, and I honest-to-God thought to myself ‘huh, I bet Toby’s pumped because it’s close to the garage’. Seriously, I thought that.”  
“Oh, Hap, people actually talk about that at meetings a lot. It’s really easy for non-addicts to kind of ‘forget’ ” -- he brought his hands up and used air quotes -- “about addictions, because they don’t experience them.”

  
Happy frowned, not really feeling comforted.

  
Toby pursed his lips. “Here. Let me show you something Christine showed me.”

  
He slipped open the drawer next to the fridge and brought out a pen and a pad of paper, which he set down on the counter.

  
“Watch this.”

  
He drew a dot, and then a line extending across the page, away from the dot.

  
“Non-addicts tend to think of addictions like this.” He pointed to the dot with the pen. “This is the addiction, the urge to gamble, in my case. And this” -- he pointed to the line -- “is time spent sober. People think that, as time goes on, you ‘leave the addiction behind” -- he used air quotes again -- “if you will. That, after a while of being sober, you basically lose the desire to drink or smoke or do drugs or whatever.”

  
Toby ripped the top piece of paper off the pad and start to draw again, this time two parallel lines.

  
“But, in reality, addictions are more like this.” He pointed to the first line. “This is my desire to gamble. And this” -- he pointed to the second line -- “is time spent sober. The desire follows me as time goes on. Every day, I still get the urge to gamble. That’s just how addictions work. They don’t go away, even though that would be really convenient -- trust me. Many a meeting has been spent wishing addictions didn’t work the way they do. But my addiction is going to follow me everywhere. For the rest of my life.”

  
“So, what? You’re just gonna live out the rest of the your life having panic attacks every so often because an old friend calls about a poker game?”

  
He shook his head. “No, not really. Look, there’s this FOSB gene-”

  
“Please don’t,” Happy interrupted, “give me the Harvard answer, doc. I promise you that that’s not gonna help anything.”

  
“Sorry. It’s just how I think of things like this.” He paused for a moment. “Addictions don’t go away, but addicts get better at dealing with them. Like, an alcoholic could never just have one drink, you know? Because they would immediately drink more. So they could never have a healthy relationship with alcohol; they just need to have _no_ relationship with alcohol. It’s that way with me and gambling. But if I stay away from casinos and I keep going to meetings, the bad days get fewer and far between. I don’t really get how” -- Happy raised her eyebrows, and he smiled -- “I know, it’s rare for me, to not understand. But it works, Happy. Meetings work. I trust that it will get better.”

  
“It sounds kind of voodoo, doc.”

  
Toby flipped the pen over in his fingers for a minute before responding.

  
“Have you ever thought about going to a meeting?”

  
Happy glanced at him through narrowed eyes. “ _Your_ meetings? Like, with you?”

  
“No. Al-Anon meetings.”

  
“I thought those were for alcoholics.”

  
“No, that’s AA. Al-Anon is for loved ones of alcoholics.”

  
“But I’m not in love with an alcoholic.”

  
“But you _are_ in love with a gambling addict.” Toby winked at the word “love” and Happy had to resist the urge to roll her eyes; despite the heaviness of the conversation -- which was making her unspeakably uncomfortable -- he was still acting like his lovey-dovey, goofball self. “And codependency, loving an addict, it’s all pretty much the same regardless of that addict’s drug of choice.”

  
Happy wanted to object to his calling her codependent -- really, she hated dependency of any kind, but codependency sounded especially bad. She’d first heard Toby use it a few weeks after he started going to meetings, and she’d had to Google it to figure out what it meant. A Wikipedia page later, and her skin had been crawling with discontent, a feeling that came back to her now.

  
Toby read the displeasure on her face and held up his hands, palms facing her, in an act of submission. “I know, I know, you’re not exactly the poster child for codependency. But the stuff you’re talking about, going to Al-Anon might help you worry less about it.”

  
She closed her eyes for a minute, and the image of Toby crying on their bathroom floor flashed across her mind.

  
“Fine. I’ll look for the closest meeting.”

  
Toby leaned backwards slightly, in shock. “Really? You had that I’m-about-to-tell-Toby-to-shut-up look on your face just now.”

  
“Yeah, well.” She looked towards the stack of pancakes, ready to end the conversation. She was grabbing at her sweatpants, twisting the fabric in her hands to distract herself from the awkward feeling she got from talking so openly.

  
Toby saw where she was looking and smiled, realizing what she was silently saying.

  
“So, are you ready for breakfast? I made my world-famous pancakes.”

  
“It’s just me here, Toby. You don’t have to pretend like you don’t use pancake mix.”

  
He laughed. “There’s the Happy I know and love.”


	28. Chapter 28

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for taking so long to update! I’ve been in and out of town for the past few weeks.

Happy glanced around the room, feeling miles away from comfortable.

  
She was in the meeting room of the Southern LA Community Center, a place she didn’t even knew existed until she found it listed on the local Al-Anon chapter’s website. It was a pretty inviting place, as far as meeting rooms go, with big posters of happy-looking people plastered across the walls and comfy-looking chairs lining the long conference table. There was a spread of junk food on a folding table in the corner; a few people hovered by it, stirring cups of coffee or carefully choosing a donut. The rest of the meeting group was already seated. Some were making small talk; others stared at their phones.

  
Something about the large group of people, none of whom she knew, made Happy want to turn around and run home. But she’d promised Toby to stay for one full meeting. She slid past the small crowd at the food table and took a seat as far away from everyone else as possible, hoping it would deter anyone from coming to talk to her before the meeting began.

  
Three minutes passed -- Happy had almost started to relax -- before a short woman came up to her.

  
“Hi there.” The woman paused to offer a huge smile. “I don’t think I’ve seen you around here. Are you new to the area?”

  
Happy shook her head. “No, but this is my first meeting.”

  
“Oh, oh, okay. Welcome! My name’s Teresa.” She stuck out a hand, and Happy shook it.

  
“I’m Happy.”

  
“Oh, well isn’t that a unique name?” Teresa sat down next to Happy and launched into a story about someone she knew named Peach. Happy only half listened; she was keeping an eye out for some sign that the meeting was starting so that Teresa would stop talking.

  
The story morphed into a one-sided discussion of Peach’s dog, who was apparently allergic to grass, not that Happy really cared, before a man stood up and cleared his throat. Silence took over the room immediately.

  
“Good afternoon, everyone,” the man said, his voice echoing slightly in the large space. “Now that you’ve had a minute to catch up with everyone, I think it’s time to begin. I see we have some new faces here today. Would anyone like to introduce themselves?”

  
Everyone was looking at Happy; it was clear that “some new faces” really meant one singular newcomer. She sighed and stood up.

  
“Hi, I’m Happy.”

  
“Hi Happy,” everyone replied in unison.

  
She sat back down, managing a small smile in response to Teresa’s encouraging thumbs-up. The man who’d started the meeting -- Bruce, she’d later find out was his name -- nodded and started talking again. Happy leaned back in her seat, doing her best to get comfortable. It was going to be a long meeting.

* * *

 “Tommy -- my brother, he’s the addict in my family -- he’s trying to find a job,” Teresa was saying.

  
The meeting had passed, as Happy had predicted it would, excruciatingly slowly. They’d started off with the serenity prayer, and then a reading from some Al-Anon book. Then, one after another, people had shared what had been going on in their life -- things related to their addicted loved ones and things totally different, coworker drama and little illnesses and relationship milestones. The bulk of their time was consumed by these small stories. After the last one ended, they simply said the serenity prayer again and the meeting was over.

  
Now, Happy had somehow gotten roped into a conversation with Teresa and some other woman, Janice. Janice had been sitting across the table from Happy and came over to introduce herself after the meeting, and then asked Teresa how her brother was doing. Teresa had started talking before Happy could find a way to excuse herself.

  
“Tommy’s a good kid, really, but he doesn’t have much experience. Plus, he started drinking when he was in high school, and you know how they stop maturing when they start drinking.” Teresa said, and Janice nodded.

  
Happy perked up at this. “Wait, what?”

  
“Oh, you know. The addict stops maturing emotionally when the addiction starts.” Teresa said it like it was obvious.

  
Teresa and Janice were now both looking at Happy, and she nodded, just to make Teresa go on, to get the eyes off her. But her stomach started to flutter. She _hadn’t_ known. Teresa and Janice knew, knew it in the easy way someone knows their multiplication tables, but she didn’t.

  
A feeling of total inadequacy was overtaking her. Suddenly, sitting in front of these people, she realized there was so much about the world of addiction that she didn’t know. There was an entire community of people that Toby interacted with, relied on, and she hardly even knew it existed, let alone knew its well-accepted opinions on addiction and maturity.

  
Toby had been going to meetings for nearly a year. Why had she never looked into twelve-step programs? Why hadn’t she wanted to learn more about her boyfriend’s life? She had placed a bowl of chips on their coffee table and called herself a supportive girlfriend.

  
As soon as Teresa paused for a breath, Happy jumped up.

  
“It was nice meeting you all. I have to go.”

  
“Oh, okay,” Teresa said, looking slightly startled. “I hope we see you around soon.”

  
Happy didn’t respond; she was too busy weaving through the mingling people to get out of the room.

* * *

Once Happy got through the parking lot and into her car, she pressed her head back against the headrest and sighed. She wanted nothing more than to go home, to apologize to Toby and to start looking up Al-Anon books, but she had a lunch date with Paige.

  
She took a few deep breaths, just enough to keep the tears of guilt in her eyes from falling down her cheeks, and then checked her phone. There were three texts waiting for her. She ignored the two from Toby -- even thinking of him made her lip tremble -- and read the one from Paige, confirming their plans.

  
_On my way_ , Happy typed quickly, and then put the car into gear and started driving away.


	29. Chapter 29

When Happy pulled up to the Dineens’ apartment building, Paige was sitting on the front steps, eyes tuned on a small paperback book. She looked up at the sound of an engine idling in front of her, smiled, and got in the truck.

  
“Hey,” she said cheerfully as Happy made a U-turn to get out of the parking lot.

  
“Hey.”

  
The air was heavy with the midday heat. Happy rolled down the truck’s windows, attempting to cool off, but, even when she was blasting down Hope Street quickly enough to make Paige grip the passenger-assist handle above her head with nervousness, the hot wind did nothing but stir their hair into wild knots.

  
“Happy, I’d really appreciate it if you slowed down,” Paige said after about ten minutes, having to nearly shout over the wind.

  
Happy grunted, though she doubted Paige could hear her, and tapped the breaks. The dial on the speedometer shifted a few degrees closer to the speed limit.

  
They continued like that, in a forced silence because of the air’s carrying off any attempt at conversation, until Happy pulled to an abrupt halt in the Kovalsky’s parking lot. The pair wordlessly went into the diner, hit by a mercifully-cold wall of air conditioning, and found a table.

  
A waitress came and took their orders relatively quickly, considering it was the middle of the lunch rush. Paige chattered on about Ralph’s robotics homework until their food came. It wasn’t until Happy had taken her first bite of salad that Paige mentioned the meeting.

  
“So,” Paige said, while Happy was crunching a mouthful of well-dressed lettuce, “how was Al-Anon?”

  
Happy took her time, chewing thoroughly, swallowing, and taking a sip of water, before responding.

  
“It was… interesting.”

  
“Interesting as in ‘wow, that was really enlightening and I learned a lot’ or interesting as in ‘I don’t have another adjective to use that wouldn’t be mean’?”

  
“Both. Or, neither.” Happy shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  
“Hey, what’s wrong?”

  
Happy sighed. “Did you know that an addict stops maturing emotionally when their addiction starts?”

  
Paige pursed her lips in confusion before responding, “Yeah, it’s a pretty basic tenant of twelve-step ideology. Why?”

  
“I didn’t know. I’d never heard that. I mean, I’d never been to a meeting before.”

  
Paige laughed. “Well, it kind of fits Toby, wouldn’t you say? It’s a little different, now that he’s had almost a year of sobriety under his belt. But still, sometimes he does the most high-school-drama kind of stuff, you know? Like the other day--” She cut off, seeing Happy’s miserable look. “Wait, why is it bad that you didn’t know?”

  
“It’s not just that; it’s _everything_ that I didn’t know -- that I don’t know. I really don’t know anything about addiction. Toby’s my boyfriend and I never even bothered to read up on this stuff.”

  
Paige placed her hand over Happy’s. It was not lost on her that the only time Happy could talk about her feelings was when she was saying something negative about herself.

  
“Come on, Happy. You’re being too hard on yourself. You just got back from an Al-Anon meeting.”

  
“My _first_ Al-Anon meeting. After Toby had been going to GA for almost a year.”

  
“So? Sometime people who love addicts never go to Al-Anon.”

  
“No, it’s different with Toby.”

  
“Why is it different with Toby?”

  
“A few weeks ago he hung up this thing I drew.”

  
Paige cocked her head, confused by the quick change of topic. “You draw?”

  
Happy waved her hand dismissively. “Yeah, but not very much. A few months ago, when I still had my cast on, he found an engine I had drawn and he asked to keep the drawing. And then three weeks ago I saw that he framed it and hung it up in our hallway. I didn’t even know he kept it.”

  
Paige smiled. “That was so sweet of him.”

  
“Exactly. And it took me an entire year just to get to one meeting for him.”

  
“Okay, Happy, back up. First of all, being kind to your significant other is not a competition. Second of all, he didn’t ask you to go to this meeting because he thought it would help him.”

  
“Did he tell you that?”

  
“No, but I know enough about twelve-step programs to know that addicts don’t depend on their girlfriends to stay sober. I’m sure Toby asked you to go to this meeting because he thought it would help _you_.”

  
Happy pressed her hand to her forehead in exasperation. “That’s even worse. All he ever does it do nice things for me.”

  
“Happy, you’re not listening to me. Look, Toby’s a nice guy. He’s a pretty good boyfriend. But he’s also a gambling addict. And it’s hard to know where an addiction is supposed to fit in a romantic relationship, I get that. But you, the girlfriend of an addict, are not supposed to feel guilty for not knowing a lot about addictions, okay? You guys have found this balance that works: Toby goes to his meetings alone -- which, by the way, is what addicts are supposed to do; they’re not supposed to bring a babysitter along, trust me -- and you stay home. And don’t for a second say that you don’t do anything for Toby, because I know for a fact that you’ve taken care of him on more than one almost-relapse night, haven’t you?”

  
Happy shrugged.

  
“I thought so. That’s more than an addict can ask for, okay?”

  
Happy glared down at her salad. “It’s just, I forget sometimes. I forget how hard it is for him to not gamble.”

  
“Oh, Happy.” Paige squeezed her hand again. “I understand. It’s so easy for us to forget, or to just wish addictions would go away. You know how many times I saw my dad cringe when a waiter would offer a wine list? I spent my entire high-school life wishing he would just be like all my friends’ dad, who could just have a beer with dinner and be fine.”

  
“I don’t wish Toby could just play one poker game though.”

  
“I know, but still. When you love an addict, there’s all this baggage that you have to deal with, not the least being going to Al-Anon meetings, if you want to do that. As far as addicts’ girlfriends go, you’re actually doing a really great job, really. And if you want to keep going to Al-Anon meetings, I think that’s a great idea. But do it because you think it’s helping you; don’t do it out of some sense of obligation to Toby, okay?”

  
Happy nodded and then took another bite of her salad. The two women ate in silence for a few minutes. Paige didn’t speak again until she finished her sandwich.

  
“So, now can we talk about why we’re really here?”

  
Happy narrowed her eyes.

  
“Why are we really here?”

  
“Oh come on. Why did you think I asked you to lunch?”

  
“To talk about the Al-Anon meeting?”

  
“Of course, that too. But I also wanted to talk about next Thursday.”

  
“Next Thursday?”

  
“Toby’s one-year sober anniversary.”

  
“How did you know that was next Thursday?”

  
“Toby told me when it was his six-month sober anniversary and I extrapolated.”

  
“...Okay?”

  
“Come on! We have a party to plan.”

  
“A sober-anniversary party? Is that a thing?”

  
“It’s not a ‘thing’ ” -- Paige used air quotes -- “per se, but it’s not that weird. My mom threw them for my dad almost every year.” Happy eyed Paige warily. “I know, I know, you don’t like parties. It doesn’t have to be a big thing; we can just have the team over, play some board games.”

  
“No, no, if we’re going to do it, we might as well do it right.”

  
Paige raised her eyebrows. “And what exactly does ‘doing it right’ entail?”

  
“Come on, this is Toby. We’ll have to get a huge ‘congratulations’ banner and a cake that with some awful pun on it. He’d want it to be a surprise, so we’ll have to get someone to keep him busy while we set up, which shouldn’t be that hard, considering he’s been going over to Sly’s apartment all the time any -- why are you looking at me like that?”

  
Paige had a goofy grin on her face. “And you call yourself a bad girlfriend.”


	30. Chapter 30

When Cabe and Toby walked past the bouncer and into the club, they were hit by the scent of tequila and perfume. The club wasn’t very busy; a few couples hung by the bar and a bachelorette-party-looking group took up two booths in the back. The kind of tuneless pop music that was popular in the early two thousands floated through the air, loud enough to encourage dancing but quiet enough to make conversation possible. It wasn’t the kind of place Cabe would have picked for a night out, but it wasn’t his least favorite club to which Toby had dragged him since he joined the team.

“Alright Cabe, my man,” Toby said once they got inside. “Want to order something from the bar, or go straight to karaoke?”

Cabe rolled his eyes. “I don’t do karaoke, Toby.” Toby raised his eyebrows. “But if you’re going to make me, then I better get drunk first.”

Toby smiled. “Cosmos it is.” Cabe opened his mouth to protest, but Toby held up a hand. “I know, I know, you only drink scotch. But _I’m_ going a Cosmo.” He went over to try to catch the bartender’s attention. Cabe hung back, watching the bachelorette party throw back tequila shots between outbursts of bubbly laughter.

After Toby ordered the drinks, he glanced beside him to a heavy-muscled man whose girlfriend had just gone to the bathroom.

The man caught his eye and said, “Hey, what’s up?” in a monotone that didn’t really invite conversation.

“Hey, how’s it going?”

“Mm. Nice hat.”

Toby nodded, his hat slipping slightly down his head. “Thanks.”

The man turned back to his drink, lifting it up to take a sip. Toby caught sight of a tattoo on his wrist: three playing cards and a pair of dice.

_Tell Cabe you’re not feeling well and then go to the casino down the block._

The thought caught Toby off-guard, and for a second he actually considered doing it. He imagined the warm feeling of sliding through a dimly-lit room, picking a table full of easy marks, and sitting down with the knowledge that he was by far the smartest person there. There was something wonderful -- something _addicting_ \-- about having that kind of power, and he ached to feel it again.

“Here you go,” the bartender said, sliding two glasses toward Toby.

“About time.”

Toby jerked backwards at the voice behind him. Cabe had come up while he wasn’t paying attention. He stared at the older man, momentarily confused.

“You gonna give me my drink, or…?”

“Oh, oh.” Toby held out the scotch, which was in his right hand. “Sorry.”

Cabe downed the drink in one gulp. “Alright, two more of these and I might considered singing with you.”

Toby smiled, all thoughts of gambling temporarily erased from his mind. “We better get the bartender then.”

* * *

 “Okay guys, who’s ready to plan a party?” Paige rubbed her hands together excitedly, a pad of paper and a pen sitting in front of her on the garage’s kitchen table. The rest of the Scorpion team, save Cabe and Toby, sat in front of her.

“I still don’t understand why it’ll take three hours to plan this thing, but yes, I’m ready,” Walter grumbled.

“It was kind of a rhetorical question, but thanks for that anyway, Walt.” Paige looked around the table. “Okay, let’s get started. First things first, we need to get someone to distract Toby while we set up.”

“Wait, wait, wait, don’t we have to set a date first?” Tim asked.

Everyone stared at him blankly.

“We already set a date,” Paige said after a moment.

Tim furrowed his eyebrows. “We did?”

“Did you not see my email?”

Tim shook his head. “What email?”

“The email about the party,” Happy said flatly.

“I didn’t see any email about the party.”

“The subject was something about case reports in case Toby saw it on someone’s computer.” Paige raised her eyebrows. “I’m sure it sent it to you.”

Tim pursed his lips. “Oh.”

“You didn’t read it, did you?”

“I mean, Cabe fills out my case reports, so I thought it wasn’t important…”

Happy rolled her eyes. “Typical.”

“Did everyone seriously read this email but me?”

Everyone nodded.

“Apparently, the best way to communicate with geniuses is to email them,” Paige said. “I figured that out after about the tenth team meeting that no one paid attention to.”

“And yet we’re having a team meeting right now?”

“Don’t change the subject.”

Tim sighed. “Sorry. Could you maybe summarize what the email said to me please?”

Paige smiled forgivingly. “It wasn’t much, really. It just said we set the date of the party for this Thursday and that we were going to have a planning meeting today--” She cut off, looking confused. “Wait, how did you know to come to the planning meeting if you didn’t read the email?”

“Cabe told me about it when he was complaining about having to take Toby out tonight to distract him.”

Walter rubbed his temple with annoyance. “We’ve wasted” -- he checked his watch -- “four minutes telling Tim what day the party is on. I still have prep work to do for the Baltimore case tomorrow. Can’t we just say Tim’s incompetent at checking his email and then move on?”

Paige frowned at him. “Be nice. But yes, let’s move on.” She picked up her pen and clicked the point out. “Okay, so the party’s on Thursday--”

“Which we’ve already said here and in an email,” Walter interrupted.

“--and Walter doesn’t like us to repeat anything,” Paige continued. “But we still need someone to distract Toby while we set up all the decorations.” She looked up from her pad of paper, which was still blank besides the _Party Planning Meeting Notes!_ written on top of the page in big, swirling letters. “Anyone want to volunteer?”

“Cabe could take him clubbing again,” Tim offered.

Paige shook her head. “Toby would definitely get suspicious. Cabe hates clubbing with him.”

“But, I mean, come on. This is Toby we’re talking about. Does anyone actually think we could plan this whole party without him finding out? I mean, he’s practically a mind reader.”

“Mm.” Paige tapped her pen on the pad of paper, creating a herd of tiny black dots in the margin. “That’s true. But there are three geniuses on this party-planning committee. So I don’t know if we can hide this from Toby, but I think we have a good shot.”

“It’s what Toby would do for one of us,” Happy cut in. “We can do it for him.”

“Alright then.” Tim looked around. “So who’s going to distract him?”

“I need to buy a new washing machine,” Sylvester said. “I could ask Toby to come help me.”

“Perfect,” Paige said, smiling. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

“Finally,” Walter mumbled.

Paige smacked his arm lightly. “Just for that, I’m putting you on decoration duty.”

Walter raised his eyebrows. “Are you sure? I’ve never gotten decorations for anything in my life.”

“Never?”

“They’re inefficient; they have absolutely no practical use. You buy them and then throw--”

“Okay, okay,” Paige interrupted, waving her  pen-less hand. “Tim, you go with Walter to get decorations, okay? And make sure to get a banner that says ‘congratulations’ on it. That’s important. Other than that, just get whatever -- streamers, you know, normal party stuff.”

Tim nodded.

“Good. Now, we need a cake, but Happy, you said you were on that, right?”

“Yeah, but I need some help thinking of a pun to put on it.”

“A pun?” Sylvester looked confused.

“Yeah, like that cake Toby got me when I broke my leg and switched off the oxycodone. It said ‘you've ibu-proven your strength’, remember? Something like that, but about gambling.”  
Tim drummed his fingers on the table. “Do you really think Toby would appreciate a pun about gambling?”

“This is Toby we’re talking about.”

“True, true. Alright, I’m pretty good about thinking up puns. Let’s see…”

Silence took over the table, each person staring at their lap, lost in thought. The quiet stretched over two minutes before Walter sighed loudly.

Seeing Happy’s glare at her boss, Paige jumped in. “We can come back to the pun. Let’s just move onto party activities, okay? Cabe made me promise to include a game of rummy in exchange for taking Toby out tonight, so that has to be on the agenda.”

“Does Cabe really not get enough rummy? We play it on planes all the time.”

“Walter, please.” Paige ran a hand through her hair exasperatedly. “Let’s just think of what else Toby would want to do, okay?”

“He’d probably want to watch a movie, probably,” Tim said.

“There we go, that’s a good idea. Thank you, Tim. Happy, what’s Toby’s favorite movie?”

Happy, Sylvester, and Walter exchanged frowning glances.

“What?” Paige looked from one genius to the other, trying to read their faces.

“Well, Toby likes a lot of movies--”

“No, what was that look about?”

Sylvester grimaced. “Toby’s favorite movie is _The Princess Bride_.”

“Okay, that’s fine. I’m pretty sure we own that. I can bring it.”

Walter groaned. “Please, don’t make us watch that movie.”

Paige rolled her eyes. “Could you please be a little more negative, Walter? I don’t think you’ve fully expressed how little you want to have this party yet.”

“No, it’s not him," Sylvester said. “It’s just, none of us really like that movie, not since…”

“The _Princess Bride_ marathon from hell,” Happy finished.

“Come again?”

“The _Princess Bride_ marathon from hell,” Happy repeated.

Sly nodded. “One of the darkest times in Scorpion history.”

Paige knit her eyebrows. “How do you marathon _The Princess Bride_? It wasn’t a series, was it?”

Walter glared across the table. “Exactly. We just watched the one movie. Over and over.”

“Sixteen times,” Happy said through an exasperated sigh.

“ _Sixteen times_? How long did that take?”

“Two days.”

“You just sat around the garage for two days watching one movie over and over again?”

Walter shook his head. “We were doing a job for a tech company out in Montana and, the night before we were supposed to fly back home, we got snowed into our hotel room. The wifi network shut down so there was nothing to do except watch movies, and Toby was the only one who brought a DVD.”

“Before he downloaded that movie onto his phone, he carried the DVD with him everywhere, I swear,” Happy said. “He’s obsessed with it.”

Walter looked at Paige. “So we all hate the movie now.”

Paige laughed. “Really? That’s why you don’t want to watch it again?”

“We all have photographic memories. Rewatching a movie that many times is basically torture.”

Paige rolled her eyes good-humoredly. “Oh, come on. You can sit through it just this once. For Toby.”

After a long pause, Happy wrinkled her nose. “Fine. I’ll do it for Toby.”

Sylvester sighed. “I guess I can, too.”

Walter leaned back and held up his hands, palms facing forward. “You all can be my guests, but sixteen times of watching that awful movie was enough for me.”

Everyone stared at Walter for a moment.

“Well,” Paige said, “the longer you refuse, the longer we’re going to sit here looking at you. Which means this meeting is going to drag on much longer than it has to.”

Walter made a low sound, almost like a grunt. “Fine. I’ll watch it -- just this once.”

Paige smiled. “Alright, now we’re getting somewhere.”


	31. Chapter 31

Toby pushed the driver-side door open, bracing himself against the wall of intense heat that awaited them outside the air-conditioned car. He slipped out of his seat, onto the pavement, and started walking with Sylvester towards the garage door.

“Well, the Whirlpool one was a little cheaper, but I’m telling you, Sly, the Samsung one had that delayed timer, which would be good for--”

He paused as he pushed open the garage door. As soon as he stepped inside and opened his mouth to resume his advice, he saw the entire team leap out from behind various pieces of furniture and yell, “Surprise!”

Toby’s eyes widened and he put his hands up, his body automatically throwing him into a defensive position before he realized what was happening. “Whoa, whoa, hey guys -- it’s, it’s not my birthday.”

“It’s not a birthday party, silly.” Paige pointed to a huge, red banner over her head that read _Congratulations!_. “It’s a sober-anniversary party. One year today! We had to get it in before you and Happy go to that medical conference this weekend.”

Toby managed a smile despite his confusion. “Oh, wow, okay. Um, thanks. I didn’t know-- I didn’t know you were planning this.”

Happy rolled her eyes lovingly. “That’s why they called it a ‘surprise party’, Toby.”

Paige put her hands on her hips. “Did we really surprise you, or are you just saying that to make us feel better?”

Toby walked forward to meet the group of his coworkers. “No, I really had no idea.” He could feel his heart pounding; he wasn’t used to being caught so off-guard.

“Well, that’s something we can all check off our bucket lists,” Walter muttered.

“Wait, what are you checking off your bucket list?” Toby, still disoriented, was having trouble following the conversation.

Cabe clapped Toby on the shoulder. “Surprising you, kid. You always know what we’re all thinking before we’ve even thought it.”

“Seriously,” Sylvester said. “Every year you guess my birthday present for you weeks in advance.”

“And you always guess what I have packed for lunch.” Tim smiled at Toby.

“Okay, okay.” Happy held up her hands to stop them. “No need to feed his ego. Trust me, his head is already big enough.”

Everyone laughed.

After a moment of looking around at the ostentatious decorations hung across their workplace, Toby said, “Wow, guys. Thanks. This is… this is great.”

Paige grinned. “Come on, we have cake.” She motioned to the white box on the kitchen table.

Ralph stepped forward excitedly. “Look at what it says.”

Toby read aloud the blue icing drawn carefully across the yellow background. “You did chip.”

Ralph wrung his hands when Toby didn’t react to the pun. “Get it? It’s like ‘you did it’, but with chip, because of the sobriety chips.”

Toby’s eyebrows rose with understanding. “ _Oooh_.” It wasn’t the cleverest pun, but in that moment it made him laugh.

“Do you like it?” Ralph looked up at Toby expectantly. Toby tussled his hair.

“I love it. Did you guys think of it yourselves?”

Sylvester nodded, grinning. “It took us, like, three hours to think of it.”

“When’d you have a three-hour planning session for this?”

“When Cabe took you out clubbing last week.”

Toby laughed. “Wow, so Cabe got to skip the endless meeting to go clubbing?” He turned to the agent. “You really took one for the team there.”

“Hell yeah I did,” Cabe said. “Have you ever heard yourself sing drunk karaoke?”

“Yes I have, and you should be honored that you got to, too.”

“Okay guys, come on.” Paige pulled out a knife. “It’s time to cut the cake.”

* * *

Once the cake was eaten and the plates cleaned up, Cabe pulled out a deck of cards.

“Who’s in for a game of rummy?”

Toby smiled but shook his head. “No, thanks, I’m good.”

Paige offered a light-hearted frown. “Oh, come on. It’s your party. You have to play.”

“Nah. Seriously though, you guys go. I like watching.”

Cabe shrugged. “Alright then, you heard the man. Let’s get started.”

Walter, Sylvester, Paige, Tim, Ralph, and Cabe huddled around the kitchen table as Cabe dealt the cards. Happy, who had been in the bathroom, returned just as the game started.

She walked up to the table and stood behind Toby. Seeing his empty hands while the rest of the team held cards, she furrowed her eyebrows.

“Toby, aren’t you going to play?”

Toby shook his head, thinking back to Happy’s time in the hospital. “You don’t like cards, right?”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean you don't have to play.”

“Well, they bring up some not-so-great memories for me, too.”

Happy nodded, and he could tell she was thinking of two weeks ago when she had found him in the bathroom. She pulled up a chair next to Toby to watch the game, subtly leaning her head on his shoulder.

“Hey Hap?” Toby said quietly after a minute.

“Mm?”

“Thanks for this.”

Happy looked up at him. “Do you like the party? Really?”

“It’s perfect.”

Happy turned her attention back to the card game, looking content.

While he watched, Toby scratched idly at a bug bite on his left arm. He didn’t get bitten often -- it was normally too dry in LA for mosquitos, who liked to lay their eggs in water -- but the team had just returned from that case in Baltimore, where the blood-thirsty bugs were nearly ubiquitous. The case had had him inside most of the time, analyzing security video, so he’d managed to avoid the all-over-your-body number of bites he used to sustain in his childhood summers. But one bite was enough to be bothersome.

He glanced down at his arm and saw that his wrist was now completely red from his fingernails’ attacks. It was clear that he was close to breaking the skin. He should really stop scratching; he’d read enough about infections to know that he didn’t really want to open an abrasion on his arm with dirty fingernails. But stopping would require a feat of will, and currently every ounce of willpower he had was going towards keeping himself from gambling.

_Some days are just bad days._ He’d told Patrick that once. He’d heard it from Christine, who had, no doubt, gotten it from one of those cheap, cliché twelve-step books.

Still, the words weren’t wrong. There were mornings when Toby would wake up and almost instantly be overcome with the desire to gamble. No matter how many days passed since he got sober, how many coins collected in the bowl on their coffee table, how many hours he devoted to the meditation and journaling of which Christine was so fond, the bad days still peppered his life. They were completely oblivious of his schedule -- they’d fall at the least-opportune of times. Like, because irony seemed to be the only higher power in his life sometimes, on days when his team threw him a one-year-soberly-anniversary party.

A sharp pain told Toby that his skin had ripped under his fingernail. He looked down and saw a trickle of blood slowly weaving its way through the wrinkles on his left palm.. The doctor in him told him to wash the area with disinfectant and cover it, but he didn’t have the energy, so he just watched the blood dry and the wound scab over.

Eventually, when his cut had stopped bleeding, Toby looked up to see Happy staring at him.

“Is your arm okay?”

“Oh yeah, it’s just a mosquito bite. I’m fine.”

Happy frowned. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, like I said, it’s just a mosquito--”

“No, not your arm. I mean in general. You seem a little off today.”

Toby swallowed. He wanted to tell her. He wanted to say that the only possible explanation for his not realizing they were planning a party was that he was wrapped up in his gambling cravings. He wanted to talk about how his fingers ached to hold the cards again. How he sometimes closed his eyes and turned his sobriety chips over in his hands, imaging they were poker chips, just because he needed to have that sensation again. How his brain refused to forget his old bookies’ phone numbers, how they’d run through his mind ceaselessly when he lay in bed some nights.

But he couldn’t bear to ruin the party, not when Happy had gone so out of her way to ensure he would like it. So he just responded, “I’m just a little tired. Nothing a good night’s sleep won't fix, I’m sure.”

Or, at least, he told himself that he was lying because of the party. Really, Toby knew the real reason, knew it in the way that a woman knows she has cancer when she feels a lump on her breast but won’t admit it, even to herself. He knew that he was hiding his cravings from Happy because this was the third bad day in the past week; he hadn’t thought of gambling so much, hadn’t counted the hours since his last poker game as often, since the weeks after he quit, before he joined GA. And he was scared the random spike in bad days had scary implications, implications he did not want to deal with.  


“Toby?”

Toby jerked back to the present; the entire team was staring at him. From the mess of cards strewn across the table, Toby guessed the rummy game was over.

“Sorry, what?”

“I said it’s time for our movie,” Paige said. “We have it all set up on a projector on the roof.”

From the tiny smile threatening to turn up the corners of Paige’s lips, Toby knew what movie she was talking about.

“Wait a minute, are we watching _The Princess Bride_?”

Paige nodded, ignoring the soft groans and rolled eyes from the rest of the team.

Tim slid forward in his seat slightly. “It took, like, half of our planning meeting to get these guys” -- he motioned to Happy, Sylvester, and Walter -- “to watch it.”

“But,” Paige cut in, “they all agreed to, as a present to you.”

Happy nodded. “So let’s start, before we all change our minds.”

Paige looked at Toby. “Are you ready?”

Toby jumped up. “I’m always ready to watch this movie.”

Everyone followed him up the stairs, all four older geniuses joking about the Montana job that had taken them so far from their home climate all those years ago, before Cabe and Paige and Tim and Ralph joined the team. The jovial conversation continued while everyone found seats on the folding chairs Cabe had brought up to the roof and Paige handed out popcorn, only stopping when Tim started the movie.

* * *

The rest of the party passed in a similar light-hearted fashion, and, when Toby and Happy finally returned home and started getting ready for bed, they were both contentedly exhausted. While Toby brushed his teeth, staring at himself in the mirror, his features looking almost ghostly in the unflattering light from their vanity, he realized he hadn’t thought about gambling since they started the movie. Maybe, he thought, that meant he wasn’t really struggling that much; maybe a one-year-sober slump was normal for gambling addicts. Maybe he was going to be okay.


	32. Chapter 32

“Are you sure you want to come with me, Hap? These conferences really aren’t all that exciting.”

Happy nodded as she watched Toby finish packing. “Yes, I’m sure, just like I was the last eight times you’ve asked me that question, dummy.”

Toby put his hands up defensively. “Alright, alright, I just don’t want you to be bored.”

He put his last shirt in his bag and then zipped it up. Toby was a last-minute packer; he didn’t even pull his suitcase out of the closet until thirty minutes before they were supposed to leave. It drove Happy crazy; she always packed two days in advance.

“Okay, I think I’m ready to go.”

“About time.”

“Hey, we still have time--” Toby cut off as he checked his watch. “Oh.”

“Mm-hm. Here, I’ll take your bag down.”

“Thanks, babe. I’ll get the road trip snacks.”

Happy rolled her eyes, both at his use of a petname and at his insistence on referring to the three-hour drive as a “road trip”, and then started lugging his suitcase out of their apartment and into the elevator.

* * *

They hit traffic about thirty minutes after leaving their apartment, the kind of awful, out-of-the-blue LA traffic that could have you stopped for three minutes or three hours.

“Hey, look, Minnesota!” Toby said while Happy was chewing her lip with annoyance.

“Minnesota?”

Toby pointed to the car in front of them. “Look at the license plate.”

Happy had to squint to read the small letters on the plate, but, sure enough, the car in front of them was from Minnesota.

“Um, okay, cool?”

“That’s the furthest state I’ve seen so far.” Toby pulled a pad of paper out of the satchel at his feet and scribbled something down.

“Please tell me you’re not keeping track of all the license plates we see.”

Toby looked at her innocently. “What, you don’t like that game?”

“It hardly even counts as a game. How do you win?”

“By finding all fifty states, duh.”

“But how do you beat someone else?”

“You can’t beat anyone else. It’s, like, a team game.”

“Whatever. You’ll never find all fifty states, anyway. We only have two-and-a-half hours to go.”

Toby shrugged. “I could, you never know. Plus, at the rate we’re going, it’s going to take a lot longer than two-and-a-half more hours to get to the hotel.”

Happy groaned. “Don’t remind me.”

“I could sing to pass the time?”

“No, that’s okay--”

But Toby was already fiddling with the radio. He ran through country, classic rock, and classical before finding a pop station and immediately starting to scream-sing along with Taylor Swift. Happy sat through half a verse before turning off the radio.

“Hey, I was vibing, Hap!”

“You’re not aloud to vibe at ninety decibels, Toby. I’d like to actually be able to hear when we finally get to Paso Robles.”

The Minnesota car started to move slightly, and Happy took her foot off the break and let her truck idle forward.

“Okay, what do _you_ suggest we do to pass the time?”

“Play the quiet game.”

Toby humphed dramatically. “Come on, seriously. What do you normally do on road trips?”

Happy shrugged. “I’m not really a big road-trip person.”

“Seriously? But you love driving.”

“I like driving for fun, not to _get_ somewhere. Then it’s just aggravating.”

“Well, what’s the farthest road trip you’ve ever been on?”

“I drove to Vegas once.”

“Vegas? That’s only, like, six hours away from LA.”

The Minnesota car stopped again; Happy half wanted to get out and start walking to their hotel.

“Alright, what’s the furthest you’ve ever road-tripped?”

“New York to LA.”

At that moment, Happy was almost glad the car was stopped so she could take her eyes off the road and shoot Toby a look of disbelief. “What? Shut up.”

“I’m serious. When I moved out here after med school, I had all this stuff and it would’ve been crazy expensive to ship it all, so I bought a used pick-up truck and drove the whole way.”

“By yourself?”

“Yep.”

“How long did it take?”

“Four days, twelve hours a day. It was actually kind of a nice tour of the country; I’d only ever lived in the northeast, so it was the first time I got to see the midwest and the southwest.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. I was a pretty adventurous eighteen-year-old.”

“Right, right, the whole graduated-med-school-when-you-were-eighteen thing. How could I forget?” Happy said monotely.

“Well, seventeen, but I couldn’t leave home until--” Toby’s explanation was cut short by his exclamation of, “Oh my God!”

Happy jumped, jerking the steering wheel; if the car had been moving, she definitely would have swerved off the road.

“Jesus, what is it?”

Toby pointed to a car two lanes over. “I found Connecticut!”

Happy stared at him for a moment. “Are you _kidding_ me? I thought you were _dying_. You can’t freak out like that when someone’s driving.”

“Sorry, sorry,” Toby said, not looking at her; he was busying writing on that notepad again. “It’s just. Connecticut is so far away. It beats Minnesota by, like, a thousand miles.”

The Minnesota car started rolling forward again, and Happy thought for a moment they might get moving, but it stopped five seconds later.

“If we make it to Paso Robles in one piece, it’ll be a miracle,” she grumbled.

* * *

 The traffic cleared up, as quickly and mysteriously as it had started, forty-five minutes later. The Minnesota car took an exit near San Fernando, much to Happy’s delight -- she was sick of staring at it’s dusty back windshield -- but the Connecticut car stayed close to them for another hour and a half.

Once they got out of range of the radio stations Toby knew, he promptly fell asleep. He woke up right as they passed Bakersfield.

“Did you have a nice nap?” Happy asked when she saw him stretching in his seat.

“I did, thanks for asking. Do you want me to drive now?”

“No, it’s fine.” Happy hated sitting through Toby’s exhaustingly-slow driving almost more than she hated LA traffic.

They were silent for a moment, the only sound the hum of the truck’s engine, before Toby said, “Why’d you want to come with me to this thing?”

Happy laughed. “Am I really that much of a bummer to road trip with?”

“No, no, I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant… I mean, these conferences are really, really boring, even for me, and I’m read medical journals for fun. For people outside the psychology world, I can’t even imagine what it’s like.”

Happy paused, thinking over her response. “I just… This is your life, you know? This is what you do. You’re always so interested in my projects; I want to learn more about yours.”

Toby nodded, and Happy knew he had probably guessed as much.

“You know, this isn’t really my life anymore. It used to be, I guess, but now -- I hardly go to these things anymore. My life is you, and Scorpion, and GA.” Saying that last bit almost felt like a lie; Toby had yet to tell anyone at his meetings about his recent struggles with staying sober.

“I know,” Happy said, “but you still read all those journals, and you peer review articles and stuff. It just feels like there’s this whole part of you that I don’t know anything about.”

One of Happy’s hands was resting on her thigh, and Toby reached out to squeeze it.

“Well, in that case, I’ll be sure to introduce you to everyone.”

“Do you know who’s gonna be there?”

“Mm, some of them. I know a few of the speakers, and I heard that a couple of my old coworkers from my practice in Pasadena are planning on going. It’s probably a lot of the same people who went to these conferences when I was still practicing.”

“Tell me about them.”

Happy looked at Toby and saw him eyeing her confusedly.

“You _want_ to hear about these people?”

“Sure. These are your old friends. I want to get to know them.”

Toby leaned over the truck’s center console to kiss Happy on the cheek.

“How did I ever get so lucky with you, Hap?”

Happy rolled her eyes. “Okay, we still have an hour left in this car ride; don’t get all sappy on me yet. Seriously. Tell me about the other stuck-up doctors.”

“Alright, well, first you have to hear about Dr. Carter…”

* * *

By the time Happy and Toby reached their hotel, having only found twelve of the fifty states, it was close to dinner time. They considered going out to eat, but ended up just staying in their room and eating some of the leftover road-trip sandwiches while watching the evening news.

Paso Robles was a tiny town, oddly small to host a psychology convention, according to Toby, but the view from their hotel was nice: their window looked over a small pasture that housed half-a-dozen horses. Happy watched the animals wander around contentedly while they listened to a heavily-made-up news anchor talk about the latest UN action in the Middle East.

“Alright, I think I’m going to go to bed,” Toby said when he finished his second peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich.

“Are you joking? It’s eight o’clock.”

“We have to be up and dressed by seven tomorrow, remember?”

“Yeah, but--” Happy cut off, not feeling like pressing the point. “Alright.”

Toby disappeared into the bathroom to change, and Happy watched the sun set over the horse pasture. By the time her boyfriend reappeared, the sun was beyond the horizon and someone had appeared to bring the horses into their barn.

Toby fell asleep almost instantly, despite his nap in the car. Happy stayed up for another few hours, listening to that same news anchor drone on. When the news finally ended and one of the old _Jurassic Park_ movies came on, she switched off the TV and went to bed.


	33. Chapter 33

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! This chapter and the next were originally meant to be posted together, but they kind of got too long for that. I couldn’t find a good place to split them up, though, so sorry if the break after this chapter happens in a weird place.

The next morning, Happy awoke at six to an empty bed. She sat up groggily, rubbing her eyes, and saw Toby rushing around their hotel room, getting ready.

“Hey, you’re up, good morning,” he said when he saw her, the rushed words all coming out in a single breath.

“Mm, yeah. What’re you doing?”

“I’m just -- I’m looking over some stuff and trying to get dressed. I got a text this morning; Dr. Fombrun dropped out at the last minute and they put me on the postpartum panel.”

“Postpartum…”

“Depression. Postpartum depression. Women experiencing depression after giving birth.”

“Oh, okay.” She watched him dig through his bag frantically for a moment. “And this panel is a bad thing?”

“I mean, not ‘bad’, per se, just -- I’ve never studied postpartum depression. That was never my area of focus. How am I supposed to be on a panel about it?”

“Why’d they put you on a panel for something you never studied?”

“Because I studied bipolar disorder and apparently that was close enough for them, and it was the last minute and they were desperate, because I guess the world will end if they only have three doctors on this panel instead of four.”

“Well, you read medical journals all the time,” Happy said, still half-asleep and wishing a cup of coffee would materialize in front of her. “You must know _something_ about postpartum depression, right?”

“Sure, the basics, but probably not all that much more than most of the people here. I’m going to look like an idiot up there.”

Happy rolled her eyes. “Please. You’re probably smarter than all the other panelists combined. Plus, you remember everything. Just bring something back from an article from, like, the eighties and everyone will think it’s genius.”

“That won’t work. Science builds on itself. All the research from thirty years ago is either considered outdated or completely wrong at this point.” He sat down on the corner of the bed and rubbed his temple. “God, this is a mess.”

Happy reached out and patted his back gently. “You’ll figure it out, doc. I’d help you if I could, but I don’t know anything about this stuff, and the breakfast downstairs opened a minute ago, so…”

“Right, go, go. I’ll figure it out.”

“Have you had anything to eat since you woke up?”

Toby waved a hand dismissively. “Some water a while ago.”

“I’ll get you a bagel.”

Toby’s only response was a soft “Mm”. Happy climbed out of bed, slipped a sweatshirt over her pajama top, and started making her way to the lobby for breakfast.

* * *

 When Happy returned to their room thirty minutes later, armed with two glasses of orange juice precariously balanced between a bagel and her chest, Toby looked slightly calmer. He was still sitting down on the bed, skimming the schedule for the medical conference.

“Hey,” she said. Toby looked up quickly and grunted in response before returning to reading. “Here.” She held out the bagel. “Eat. It won’t matter how much you know about postpartum depression if you faint on stage.”

Toby accepted the bagel, and Happy took the schedule from his hand. It was only a one-day conference, eight hours from start to finish.

“So this panel is the only time you’re going to be talking, right?”

“Mm-hm.”

“And what’s the point of these conferences, again?”

Toby shrugged. “Mostly to get the word out about new research. Make sure everyone knows about the newest treatment options, get people to combine their ideas, that sort of thing. I’m telling you, it’s going--”

“To be boring. Yeah, you covered that already. When do I get to meet Dr. Carter and all them?”

“They’ll be around all day. Once we get there, we’ll have an hour before any of the speeches start, so I’ll introduce you around. Knock some socks off.”

Happy looked up from the schedule. “What does that mean?”

Toby smiled sheepishly. “Oh, you know. All these people know me as this dorky, immature young doctor. They’ll all be pretty blown away that I managed to land someone like you.”

Happy rolled her eyes. “Whatever you say, doc.” She paused. “But -- what about Amy?”

“What about her?”

Happy bit her lip before continuing; they didn’t talk about Amy much, and it felt odd to bring her up.  
“I mean, these people knew you when you were engaged to her, didn’t they?”

“Yeah, but they all thought she was way too good for me. None of them were surprised when they heard she broke off the engagement.”

Happy was sure Toby didn’t mean for it to happen, but a sour feeling fell over the conversation. She was imagining Toby as he was when Amy left him, gambling away their savings and pretending everything was fine. Then something occurred to her.

“Is Quincy Berkstead going to be here?”

Toby laughed. “Oh, if he was going to be here I wouldn’t have come, trust me. There aren’t enough swag bags in the world to make it worth putting up with him for eight hours.”

“Swag bags?”

“Yeah, like little gifts bags they give you--”

“I know what swag bags are. But you get them at these things?”

“Of course. That’s the reason half these people are coming. Last conference I went to, one of the antidepressant companies gave out mugs with medical puns on them. I was in heaven.”

Happy raised her eyebrows. “How come I’ve never seen you use it?”

Toby looked at his hands. “I kind of broke it on the drive home.”

Happy pursed her lips to keep from laughing. “I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not. You would’ve hated that mug.”

“Mm, you’re probably right.”

Toby smiled at her. “Come on, get dressed. We have to go soon.”

And so they continued getting ready, Quincy Berkstead completely forgotten.


	34. Chapter 34

When Happy and Toby arrived at the Paso Robles Community Center, the small parking lot was almost full. They found a spot near the back and moseyed through the heat to the building, where a smiling young woman at a folding table waited to check them in.

Toby walked up to her, mouth open, ready to introduce himself, but the check-in lady beat him to it.

“Doctor Tobias Curtis,” she said warmly, holding out a hand, which Toby shook. “It’s an honor. My name’s Allison.”

“Nice to meet you, Allison,” Toby said, as if it were totally normal that a twenty-something-year-old was so blatantly fawning over him. “This is my girlfriend, Happy.”

“Happy Quinn, of course. You’re on the list, too.”

Happy nodded silently. They were given name tags and directed to a waiting room.

“Do you know that girl?” Happy whispered when they got few yards away from her.

“If I had, why would she have introduced herself?”

“I don’t know. She just acted like you were famous or something.”

Toby smirked at her. “What can I say? I’m kind of a big deal to these people.”

He said it in a goofy tone of voice, the same way he said megalomaniac-esque things like _I could probably sew up a bullet wound with a paperclip and some blades of grass if I wanted to_. It was a voice that invited Happy to smack him and tell him to get over himself.

But as the day wore on, she started to think he was telling the truth. Most people knew Toby, and not just the ones that he used to work with. People who were fresh out of med school, way too young to have seen any of Toby’s work first-hand, came up to shyly introduce themselves and talk about their latest research. Toby would nod along humbly, acting humble in a way that Happy had never seen before.

The postpartum panel was early on the schedule, so Happy didn’t get to meet many people before Allison whisked them away to an auditorium. Toby went backstage while Happy found a seat.

She felt claustrophobic, even in the big room; there were too many doctor’s egos in one place. A few women came and sat beside her but -- thankfully -- didn’t try to start a conversation. Happy picked at her chipping nail polish until the lights dimmed and the speakers stepped onstage.

As she sat listened to the panelists speak, Happy had to continually remind herself that Toby -- allegedly -- had almost no idea what he was talking about. He sounded so confident and knowledgeable. And it could have just been professional courtesy, but the rest of the panelists as well as the entire audience seemed to watch Toby with nearly-religious reverence, as if he, despite having never worked with postpartum depression, knew all the secrets to its diagnosis and treatment.

Happy, more than once, found herself wondering why Toby had wanted to give up this kind of fame. It wasn’t the kind of thing she strived for, of course -- her legs shook with nervousness at even the thought of sitting up in front of so many people -- but Toby seemed to live for situations like this, instances where people idolized his genius. His work now had him saving the world, of course, but no one kissed his feet for it, and Toby was a kiss-my-feet kind of guy.

Happy wrinkled her nose, glad no one could hear her thoughts. Toby would’ve loved that innuendo.

* * *

The two-hour panel went by quickly, and soon Toby was walking off the stage and Happy was filing out of the auditorium with the rest of the audience. It took a while for her to find her boyfriend in the crowd, but soon he appeared beside her.

“Hey, Hap,” he said, reaching out and grabbing her hand. “How was that? Terribly boring?”

“No, no, it was pretty interesting, actually.”

Toby grinned. “And I’m sure you enjoyed my making a complete fool out of myself, huh?”

“Are you kidding? You were the smartest person up there.”

“Yeah, but I had nothing to contribute to what they were saying. I barely talked.”

“It didn’t seem like that to me at all. Everyone looked at you like you knew everything.”

Toby rolled his eyes. “Sure. They just wanted to be polite. What are they going to do, boo me off the stage?”

“You know, doc, for all the time you spend being unbearably cocky, you really have trouble recognizing when people actually think you’re smart.”

Toby furrowed his eyebrows, trying to think of a response, but someone came up and interrupted them before he had a chance.

“Tobias M. Curtis,” the tall man said, extending a hand jovially. “I haven’t seen you in forever.”

“Hey, Joe.”

“When was the last time we saw each other? Not Santa Monica, was it?”

Toby chuckled. “I think it might have been. But let’s not go reminiscing about that conference, okay? I don’t need any reminders of that after party.”

Joe laughed, and then looked at Happy. “You want to introduce me to your friend?”

“Joe, this is my girlfriend, Happy Quinn. Happy, this is Dr. Joe Schneider.”

Happy shook the man’s hand; his grip was firm, confident.

“Hi there.”

“It’s nice to meet you. Now, tell me: how much is he paying you to be here?”

Happy looked at Toby, confusion coming over her face. “Um, what?”

Joe broke into a bellowing laugh while Toby’s cheeks turned pink. “He’s making a very-distasteful,” -- at that, Toby elbowed the other doctor in the ribs -- “joke about prostitutes, Hap.”

“ _Oh_.”

Toby and Joe started talking about past medical conferences while Happy watched. After a minute, she excused herself and went to go find a bathroom. The community center was like a maze, though, and the crowds of people all wandering around didn’t make spotting restroom signs any easier.

As she was looking around, Happy saw a table giving away gift bags -- swag bags, as Toby called them. There were tables like this throughout the building, all run by pharmaceutical companies encouraging doctors to prescribe their medications. A short man in a well-fitted suit walked away from the table and pulled a small white mug out of his bag. There were black words scrawled across it in a small, bold font and, even from a distance, Happy recognize what was written: medical puns.

It must’ve been the same company from Toby’s last conference. Smiling to herself, Happy wove through the crowd to steal a bag from the table. The company reps, busy trying to sell something to a skinny, bored-looking woman, didn’t notice Happy at all.

She backed away from the table, pulled the mug out of the bag, and turned it over in her hands, reading the puns. Some she didn’t understand, but some made her chuckle. Toby would love it.

Happy gently put the mug back in the bag and started to turn around, remembering her quest for a bathroom, as someone collided with her.

“Hey,” she said sharply, her knee-jerk reaction being annoyance. “Watch--”

She cut off when she saw the man’s face. He was short, average-looking, with a greying beard, and she definitely recognized him from somewhere.

“Oh, hey, I’m so sorry. Clumsy me.” The man smiled. “There are just so many people here. A little overwhelming, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Happy responded, wracking her brain to remember the man. The handwriting on his name tag was hard to read, but it looked like his first name started with an O. It could have been Oscar -- did she know any Oscars?

The mystery man was looking at her blankly. “Are you a psychologist too?”

Happy shook her head. “No, I’m here with my boyfriend. He’s a doctor.”

“Oh, well, nice of you to tag along. It’s not been too boring, I hope?”

“No, no, it’s been pretty interesting.”

“Well, that’s good.” He paused, glancing down at her nametag. “Happy? What a unique name.”

“Mm-hm.”

“You know, my wife knew someone named Happy once. Well, kind of. Her ex-boyfriend worked with someone named Happy. I know, that’s an odd thing for me to remember, but she -- my wife -- has the funniest stories about her ex and his coworkers.”

Happy’s eyes widened as she finally realized where she knew the man from: a dust jacket. His name wasn’t Oscar; it was Quincy.

Quincy was still rambling on, telling a story about Walter and Collins that Happy already knew -- she had been the one to tell the story to Toby, who told Amy, who told the man standing in front of her -- as Happy saw Toby over his shoulder.

Her boyfriend was coming towards her, a smile on his face. He couldn’t see Quincy’s face; he probably thought he was going to save her from having to mingle with some nameless, pompous doctor.

A second before Toby reached them, Quincy let his story trail off, mistaking Happy’s shocked silence for boredom.

“Well, anyway, I hope you enjoy the rest of the--”

“Hey, Happy!” Toby came up next to Happy and turned around, ready to introduce himself. “And--” Only one syllable got out of his mouth before he froze.

“Toby?”

“Quincy?”

A terrible, awkward silence fell over the trio, lasting a solid ninety seconds. Quincy was the first to speak.

“I didn’t realize…”

“That I was here? Yeah, it’s not like I was on the postpartum panel or anything.”

“Oh, were you? I came late -- but why did they put you on a postpartum panel?”

Toby stared down at his self-proclaimed nemesis, taking full advantage of the two inches he had on the man. “Dr. Fombrun canceled.”

“So they called you?”

“Mm-hm.”

“Oh, well... congratulations, then.”

“Thank you. And I hear your research on schizophrenia is going well?”

“Yes, yes, we’re making good headway.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“Yeah, yeah. I, uh, I better -- I haven’t checked out most of the tables yet, so.”

“Yeah, you better go see what drugs everyone’s trying to sell you.”

Quincy laughed awkwardly, though it wasn't really clear if the joke was trying to release some of the tension that was surrounding them or add to it. With a quick nod to Happy, he slipped away.

Toby shook his head. “I’m sorry, Hap, I really didn't think he’d be here.”

“It’s fine,” Happy said. She shook her head and then tried to change the subject. “How was catching up with that Dr. Joe guy?”

Toby shrugged. “I realized he’s kind of a jerk. Kept making jokes about cheating on his wife.”

Happy knocked her shoulder gently into his. “What do you say we just go back to the hotel and chill for a while? I think I’ve gotten enough of the whole medical-conference thing.”

“Are you sure? You didn’t get to meet all my old friends.”

She nodded. “It’s fine. I’d rather just lay around in bed and watch a few cooking shows or something.”

Toby smiled. “That sounds perfect.”

* * *

Walter had given them the rest of the evening, as well as the following morning, off from work after Toby convinced him the conference was “in pursuit of scientific advancement”, so they spent the day curled up in their hotel bed, watching reruns of crappy TV shows and periodically ordering pancakes from room service.

Toby had been so off-put by their encounter with his Quincy that he hadn’t even asked about the bag that had been in Happy’s hand. As soon as they got back to their room, she’d surreptitiously tucked it in her suitcase; she was planning on giving it to him when they got home.

The day passed in a deliciously-lazy fashion, a rare occurrence for the pair, and they decided to go to bed early. Happy fell asleep with her head on Toby’s chest, her hand placed over his heart so she could feel it beating.

* * *

The ride home from the conference was, mercifully, much faster than the ride to it; they were home by one in the afternoon the next day. As soon as they got through the door, Toby announced that he wanted to catch the tail end of the midday news, so he plopped down on the sofa. Just as he was turning on the TV, though, his phone rang; he answered it with a grumbly “Hello?”.

Happy rolled her bag into the bedroom, put it on the bed, unzipped it, and pulled the mug out, excited to see that it was still intact. She walked it into the living room to give it to Toby just as he was hanging up the phone.

“Hey Toby, guess what I--” She cut off when she saw the look of shock on his face. “Is everything okay? Who was that on the phone?”

Toby opened his mouth but couldn’t find words. For a moment, Happy thought Walter had called with one of those everyone-in-LA-is-about-to-die cases.

“Toby, what’s wrong?”

“I, uh… That was the Albany Police. My dad… My dad’s dead.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know that a lot of people were speculating after 2x21 that Toby’s comment to Pandova -- “I know how you feel”, I think it was -- implied that he (Toby) had lost his parents, too. But I couldn’t remember any character ever outright saying that his father had passed, so I hoping that it’s not breaking cannon to say that his father could be alive -- or, from the point of view of this fic, that his father was alive up until this chapter.


	35. Chapter 35

It took Happy a moment to register the words, during which Toby’s shocked face collapsed into an awful, tearful grimace. Once Happy understood what he had said, she stepped towards him.

“Toby, I…” She let the sentence trail off, as Toby knew she would; she had no words to finish it. Comforting people was not a skill she had ever had. Toby let his head fall into his hands. His shoulders shook with small, silent sobs.

He heard shuffling, and he looked up to see Happy holding her phone to her ear. For a second he thought she was calling the Albany Police to check to see if it was a mistake, if his father was still alive. Then she said, “Hey, Paige?”, and he covered his face with his hands again. 

* * *

The burden of planning Jack Curtis’s funeral fell on Toby, as his mother was living in a long-term mental-illness treatment facility and he had no siblings. It was something Toby thought he would be able to do easily; throughout his residency, he had been surrounded by death, so much so that he had started to become familiar with it. He began to recognize the way the eyes glaze over with unconsciousness, the way the jaw falls open as the muscles relax, the way blood starts to drain from the face and extremities. By the end of his residency, Toby could touch a corpse’s neck and say, with amazing accuracy, how long it had been dead.

Toby had come to feel as if he _knew_ death, knew it the way he knew about splinting a broken bone or sewing up a laceration. And, because a funeral was nothing more than an extension of death, Toby figured funereal planning would come to him almost effortlessly.  

But something about his father’s funeral paralyzed him. He didn’t couldn’t do any of the necessary tasks. How could he send out invitations when his father had no close friends? How could he call the florist when his had no idea what flowers his father liked? How could he miss a father so terribly when he had hated him so much?

Paige and Happy stepped forward to take over almost all of the funeral planning; as soon as Happy had called Paige, she had come over and lept into action, somehow -- as always -- knowing exactly what to do. Happy followed her instructions, and the funeral fell into place.

Toby might have felt grateful for them if he wasn’t so busy being miserable.

The guest list was just the team, a few of Toby’s relatives, and his mom. They organized a small ceremony in Albany; it wasn’t Jack’s hometown but it was the place he had breathed his final breaths.

The funeral took place three days after Toby and Happy got back from the conference. Walter called off all of Scorpion’s projects for that weekend and the team flew across the country to bury Toby’s father. 

* * *

“Your feet are cold,” Happy said quietly.

“Mm,” was Toby’s only response.

It was the night before the funeral; they were curled up next to each other in a hotel bed. The scene was so similar to the one from four nights ago, when they fell asleep together after the conference, but it felt so different.

“Do you want me to get you a pair of socks from your bag?”

Happy was trying. God, she was trying. She’d arranged everything. She’d brought Toby meals in bed and held him after Paige had left that first night, when he’d sat on the couch and cried and cried and cried. She’d tried to talk to him, to help him feel better.

But he was just so _sad_.

He felt bad. He knew she was miles away from her comfort zone but she was still doing her best, and he wasn’t responding to her efforts. He should really thank her more; he should stop acting so aloof and preoccupied whenever she tried to talk to him.

But he _was_ preoccupied. His father was dead. He had hated his father, for more reasons than he could count. But most of all he hated his father for dying before he’d had a chance to reconnect with him.

Recently, Toby had been thinking of calling him. As Toby had gone to more GA meetings, as he had began to understand addiction from the viewpoint of someone other than a impassive psychiatrist, he had surprised himself by starting to feel a bit of forgiveness towards his father.

It had been about eight months since they’d talked. Jack had called him from a motel in Reno under the guise of wishing him a happy birthday, but it hadn’t taken long for the conversation to get to the inevitable asking-for-money end, and Toby had hung up. At that point, the psychiatrist was still in the selfish part of recovery, the keep-your-side-of-the-street-clean- and-don’t-worry-about-anyone-else phase, and he didn’t feel able to deal with his father then.

It took another six weeks for Toby to stop being angry at his father whenever he thought of him, another ten weeks after that for Toby to even consider contacting him. But, since Happy have moved in and he’d has his one-year-sober party and everything, it had started to seem like the logical next step in his recovery.

And then his father had died.

“Hello?”

Toby turned his head to look at Happy, lying there on the bed next to him; he’d forgotten that she had asked him a question.

“Sorry, what?”

“Do you want some socks to warm up your feet?”

“Oh. No, it’s fine.” A beat too late, he added, “Thanks.”

“Do you want to… talk?” Happy asked, making Toby feel even more guilty. She never asked to talk; she hated talking. She was trying _so hard_.

“No, thanks. I just… I’m kind of tired. Maybe we could watch TV?”

“Okay, sure.” Happy jumped at the suggestion, slipping out of the bed. It was the first preference Toby had shown in three days.

When she turned the TV on, the late-night news popped up. They were talking about the Middle East again; the UN action had just led to more unrest. Photos of children who had been caught in bombings flashed across the screen; small boys and girls, dressed in rags, bleeding and crying.

Toby watched solemnly for a minute. Maybe the pictures should’ve made him feel better; at least he wasn’t an orphan in a UN hospital. But they were making him feel worse.

Happy changed the channel to a cooking show.

“This look good?” she asked.

“Sure.”

Happy crawled back into bed next to Toby. Out of habit, he shifted so she could tuck herself against his side and he could put his arm around her shoulder. They stayed like that, curled up together, for a few reruns of _Chopped_ , and then they fell asleep.


	36. Chapter 36

Toby woke up early the next morning and went down to breakfast while Happy slept. He hoped the early hour would mean that no one else was in the hotel dining room. The team had arrived in New York late the night before; Happy had told all of Toby’s relatives that he was too tired to see anyone, and he still didn’t feel up to the reunion greetings.

There was only one other person in the dining room when Toby got down there, a woman in a business suit, and he didn’t recognize her. He gave her a nod and then went over to the buffet to fix himself some cereal. He had just grabbed a bowl, though, when he heard his name.

“Toby.”

He looked up to see Walter standing beside him, perhaps the person he least wanted to have a conversation with at that moment.

“Hey, boss.”

“How are you… this morning?” Walter asked, pausing oddly in the middle of the sentence.

“Just dandy, thanks for asking.”

“Well, I was coming down to eat and…” Walter paused again, and Toby braced himself for some stupid remark about the inefficiency of the hotel elevators or the lack of fermented fish at the buffet.

“And?”

“And I saw one of your cousins in the hallway. He went back upstairs to grab his wallet, but he’s coming back down to eat in a minute. I knew you didn’t really want to see anybody last night, so I just thought… Well, if you’re still avoiding everyone, you might want to go up to the room. I could… bring you some food, if you want.”

Toby pressed his lips together; he felt the odd urge to cry.

“Here.” Walter held his hand out and Toby put the bowl in it. “I’ll bring some cereal up to your room.”

“Thanks, boss.”

Walter nodded awkwardly. “Oh, and I would suggest going up the side stairwell.”

Toby nodded, and then turned and slipped out of the dining room. 

* * *

The viewing started at ten that morning. The team arrived at quarter of, when the funeral home was still empty, save for a few workers putting out food. There was a plate of pasta marked “priest stranglers”; Happy braced herself when she and Toby passed it -- it was a morbid pun waiting to happen -- but he didn’t mention the odd name.

At five till ten, Happy and Toby walked over to stand by the door to the viewing room to greet people as they came in.

“Hey,” Happy said, seeing the blank look on Toby’s face. “How are you doing?”

“I don’t know. Kind of numb, I guess.”

“Well, numb’s good. I mean, not ‘good’, obviously. But numb’s better than sad, right?” She bit her lip. “Or maybe it’s not. I don’t know. I mean, well--”

“Toby,” a loud voice said, interrupting Happy.

Happy and Toby turned around to see a tall man walking towards them.

“Chris,” Toby said.

The man came up and gave Toby a handshake.  

“It’s been too long,” he said somberly.

“Well, you know what they say. Only weddings and funerals.”

“Hey, you’re the one who moved across the country. Plane tickets are expensive.”

“Don’t I know it. Do you think I hitchhiked here?”

Chris smiled slightly. “Look, man, I’m sorry about your dad. We all loved him, you know.”

“Yeah, I know. Thanks for saying that.”

Chris turned to Happy, giving her his hand to shake. “Hi, Chris Curtis. I’m Toby’s cousin.”

“Happy Quinn. I’m his girlfriend.”

“It’s very nice to meet you.”

“Likewise.”

Chris moved on; a minute later, a young man came in, wheeling a white-haired lady in a wheelchair in front of him.

“Danny,” Toby said to the man. “Thanks for picking her up.”

“ ‘Course. We had quite the trip from Broadmead, didn’t we, Sarah?” Danny looked down at the woman.

“Oh, yes, it was a lovely drive. Such nice weather today, isn’t it, Toby?” She spoke with a slight Italian accent.

“Yes, Mom.”

The woman smiled. “It’s been too long.”

“Nine years?”

“Let’s call it an even decade, shall we? Come here.”

Toby leaned down so his mother could kiss him on the cheek.

“And who is this?” the elderly woman asked.

“Mom, this is Happy, my girlfriend.”

“It’s very nice to meet you, Mrs. Curtis.”

“Oh, I haven’t been a Curtis since Toby went to college, dear. Please, call me Sarah.”

“Oh -- okay, Sarah.”

“Now, Toby, is there strozzapreti over with the food, like I asked?”

“Yes, but brace yourself: it’s not marked with it’s Italian name.”

“Oh, please, I’ve been in this country long enough to know the American names of pastas, Toby. Come on, Danny, let’s get some priest stranglers.”

After the pair walked over to the food table, Happy raised her eyebrows at Toby.

“I didn’t know you were Italian.”

“Yeah, but only on my mother’s side. My father was Irish.”

“Mm. She doesn’t seem too torn up about today.”

“Well, they’d been divorced for fifteen years, and she’s been married twice since. I was actually kind of surprised she agreed to come. They weren’t exactly on good terms.”

“Has it really been twelve years since you’ve seen each other?”

“Yeah. She never came out to visit me once I moved to LA.”

“She seems so…”

“Normal? Not like someone who would have to live in a mental hospital?”

Happy wanted to stop prying, but this was the most animated -- the least sad -- she’d seen Toby act in a week, so she nodded.

“Yeah, well. She has her good days. Recently, though, they’re getting less and less frequent, or so her caretakers say. Right now she basically lives in a pseudo-retirement home, but they’re talking about moving her into a full-time supervision ward.”

“Do you talk to the staff at the hospital?”

“Occasionally. I call on her birthday, and when I’m done talking with her sometimes the nurses come on the line and I ask them a few questions. I’m her only kid, you know? I mean, her brother’s daughters do a lot for her -- the visit all the time -- but I feel like I should at least keep up with what’s going on with her.”

“And what _is_ going on with her?”

“Well, bipolar disorder -- that’s something she’s been living with forever. It was manageable -- well, that’s kind of using the word ‘manageable’ loosely, but -- around until the end of her third marriage, and then it got bad enough that she lost her job. Then it got worse, and it might have started mixing with dementia, they’re not really sure, and so her brother admitted her to the facility before he died. The doctors don’t think she’s going to be getting any better, so.”

“What do you think?”

Toby looked over at his mother, who was munching contentedly on some crackers and cheese. “I think she seems happy now, which is more than I could say for a lot of my childhood.”

More people came in there, and then it was time for the tribute to begin, so Happy’s education of Toby’s family history was, at least for the moment, over.


	37. Chapter 37

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone! Thanks to everyone who has kept up with this fic (especially through my seriously erratic updates)! In light of some recent odd-character-development events, I just wanted to say that this fic is canon-complacent only through 2x20; it does not include Happy’s marriage to Walter or her engagement to Toby. Hope you enjoy!

Toby got up on the small stage at the front of the room to start the tribute. Happy stood off to the side, watching him. His father’s casket -- closed, as Paige had suggested -- was behind him, and a large picture of Jack Curtis was on a small easel next to him.

“Good morning, everyone,” Toby said, and the room became immediately silent. “If you would all take a seat, we’re about to begin.”

As people shuffled to their seats, Happy couldn’t help but think that Toby sounded like he was introducing a play.

“Thank you,” Toby said when the shuffling had stopped. “As you all know, we’re here today to celebrate the life of my father, Jack Curtis. I’ve prepared a few words.” He paused to pull notecards out of his jacket’s inside pocket. “Now, I think we all remember my father as this fun guy who used to take the kids to the batting cages on the weekend. He had this zest for life…” Toby trailed off and glanced around the room. “I’m sorry, excuse me.”

Without any other warning, Toby slipped off stage and started walking towards the back door of the room. Happy moved to follow him. Paige immediately jumped on stage; as Happy got out the door, she heard the room start to sing “Amazing Grace”.

Toby turned into side room and Happy followed him; it turned out to be a small office. Toby half sat, half crumpled onto the desk, his head in his hands.

“Toby, Toby, hey.” Happy went over and put a hand on his shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

He looked up at her, tears on his cheeks. “I hated him _so much_ , Happy. _So much_.”

“…Okay?”

“Why am I so sad?”

Happy sat down on the desk next to him. She wanted so badly to help him, but she didn’t know what to say. After a minute, the words to come out of her mouth were, “Stockholm syndrome.”

“What?”

“Maybe it’s like Stockholm syndrome. Like, you hated him, but you also liked him, too.”

“Okay, first of all, that’s not what Stockholm syndrome is; that’s just a love-hate relationship.”

“Okay, okay, not Stockholm syndrome. But there’s got to be a word for this. You hate someone for some of the things they did -- like gambling -- but you love them for taking you to the batting cages on the weekend. Come on, doc, help me out. I didn’t go to Harvard.”

Toby laughed bleakly. “Well, transactional analysis would suggest that my interactions with my father through different ego states might have contributed to this emotional ambivalence.”

“Alright, you’re using words I don’t know. That’s a good sign, right?”

Toby laughed again before sobering. “I don’t know, Hap. I could write an entire case report about this situation from a psychiatrist’s point of view. It doesn’t make me any less sad.”

Happy slipped onto the desk beside Toby and took his hand in hers. “I know. Paige keeps telling us that we can’t outsmart our emotions.”

Toby pressed a kiss onto Happy’s hair. “I had this whole stupid speech planned out, about how Dad taught me to ride a bike and chop wood and whatever else, when really what I remember most about him is how he took me to his poker games when I was in elementary school. I don’t think I can go back out there and talk.”

“Well, then don’t. I’m sure Paige can keep them occupied long enough. Let’s just sit here for a while.”

And so they did. They stayed there until the tribute was over and Sylvester came and found them, telling them it was time for the procession.

* * *

The ride to the graveyard was only ten minutes. It really was a nice day; the sun shone over the crowd of funeral-goers. There was a minister there, who read a passage from the Bible that Toby tuned out. Toby’s father wouldn’t have really cared; Jack Curtis hadn’t been to church since he moved out of his mother’s house. Then the coffin was lowered into the ground, Toby threw a handful of dirt onto it, and the crowd turned around to leave.

* * *

The reception was held in the hotel conference room. When the team got there, they passed through the line for food and then all sat down at a table. Happy sat next to Toby, who pushed the food around on his plate without eating.

A minute after they had sat down, a cousin wheeled Sarah over.

“Toby,” his mother said, “it was a lovely service.”

“You don’t have to lie, Mom. I know you hate ‘Amazing Grace’.”

“Well, it’s not my favorite, but your friend here has a very nice voice.”

“Thank you,” Paige said, smiling.

“Now, I have to get going. It’s getting late.” At this, Happy glanced at her watch; it was just past two in the afternoon. “But it was nice to see you, dear.” Sarah reached out and patted Toby’s hand. “Do tell me when you two” -- she motioned between him and Happy -- “finally get married.”

Happy turned her eyes to her lap, not looking up until Sarah was gone.

“There’s my mom for you,” Toby said, turning to the table. “A-plus at making people feel uncomfortable.”

“She seemed like she was trying to be nice,” Paige offered.

“I guess.” Toby pushed his chair back. “I think I’m going to go get some fresh air. It’s stuffy in here.”

Happy started to get up, but Sylvester beat her.

“I’ll come, too,” he said.

Toby looked like he was going to protest, but in the end just nodded. The two men walked out together.

After a minute, Walter went to use the bathroom and Tim and Cabe got up to get more food, leaving Happy alone with Paige.

“How are you holding up?” Paige asked.

“I don’t know, fine. Just, God, you should have heard me try to cheer Toby up. ‘Oh, you’re feeling numb? Numb is good! It’s better than feeling sad!’ I’m just an idiot.”

“Oh, come on, Happy, you’re not an idiot. You’re trying really hard, and I’m sure Toby knows that.”

Happy frowned. “I guess. It’s just, I know if I was in his situation, he would be _so_ good about it, you know? So kind and supportive. I just want to be there for him.”

“You _are_ being there for him. You know, all we can do is all we can do. There’s no magic words you can say to make him happy right now. Just being here is enough.”

Happy shook her head. “No, Toby deserves someone who knows how to deal with this stuff, you know? I just feel like I’m failing him.”

“Okay, okay, don’t go down the ‘I’m not good enough for him’ road. I’m sure that’s not what Toby’s thinking right now.”

Happy shrugged, unsatisfied, and then started eating her food.

* * *

Clouds had taken over the previously-blue sky when Toby and Sylvester got outside. They stood next to each other awkwardly in the parking lot.

“How are you feeling?” Sylvester asked.

“Oh, you know. Seeing all these people, it’s bringing back some bad memories.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. There’s a reason I haven’t seen any of them in a decade.”

“Did you see them a lot when you were younger?”

“Oh, all the time. We all grew up in Brooklyn together. We got together for Sunday dinners every week.”

“I had no idea you were so close to your family.”

“Well, ‘close’ isn’t exactly the word I’d use. My dad liked me hanging out with the other boys because he thought it’d toughen me up, you know, keep me from reading all those big books. My parents never really got along with my aunts and uncles, though.”

“Why not?”

“I think it was a lot of stuff from before I was born. You know, family fights. The dinners were always tense. And then my dad would send me in the backyard to play with my cousins, but they’d just pummel me and call it ‘wrestling’.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah, and then I went off to college and never talked to them again. So it’s a little awkward now.”

“You know, my dad sent me to bootcamps in the summer to toughen me up, and the boys there pounded on me, too. I don’t know what I’d do if I had to see them now.”

Toby nodded. “You know what? Let’s ditch them.”

“Ditch who?”

“All the people here. Let’s get Walter and go grab some beers or something.”

“Aren’t you supposed to say goodbye to them?”

“We’ll tell Paige to tell everyone I’m sick or something. I promise you I won’t be too missed.”

“Well, then, let’s go. I think there’s a bar a few miles down the road.”

Toby smiled and clapped Sylvester on the back. “Let’s go.”


	38. Chapter 38

When the reception ended, Cabe drove Paige, Happy, and Tim back to the hotel. Toby, Walter, and Sylvester were still out drinking. Paige offered to hang out with Happy for a while, but the mechanic said she wanted to be alone, so Paige went back to her room to call Ralph.

After a lot of negotiation, it had been agreed that, while Paige was in New York, Ralph could stay home alone during the day as long as he went to Sloan’s house at night. By the time Paige got back to her room, it was a little past five in East-Coast time, meaning Ralph would probably just be getting home from school. She pulled out her phone and dialed her apartment’s number.

“Hi, Mom.”

“Ralph, hi! How are you?”

“Fine. How was the funeral?”

“Oh, it was a really nice service.”

“Really? It was nice?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Well, aren’t funerals supposed to be sad?”

“Oh, yes, it was really sad for some people. But it was also nice that everyone got a chance to say goodbye to Toby’s dad. Does that make sense?”

“I guess.”

“Good. How’s your homework coming?”

“I finished it during lunch.”

“Oh, good! So what are you doing now?”

“I’m looking at the algorithm that Walter and I were working on yesterday.”

“Oh, right. What does that algorithm do, again?”

Ralph launched into one of those explanations exceptionally-complicated, technological-jaron-filled explanations that Paige had no hope of understanding. She still loved listening to the animation in his voice, though, and she was almost sad when the explanation was over.

“Wow, that sounds like a complicated project.”

“Kind of, yeah.”

“Alright, well I’ll let you get back to it, then. But it was nice to talk to you, sweetie. And don’t forget, Sloan’s mom is picking you up at seven, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

“Goodbye.”

After Paige hung up the phone, she went out into the hallway to go find Tim and Cabe and see if they were ready for dinner. On the way to their room, though, she ran into Toby.

“Toby!” she called, and, as he looked at her, she could see immediately that he was decently drunk.

“Hey, Paige,” he said. He, at least, seemed happier than he had been at the tribute.

“How are you doing?”

“Good, just going to go lie down for a minute.”

“Wait.” Paige grabbed his arm; she didn’t think Happy would be in the mood to deal with a drunk psychiatrist. “How about you come lie down in my room? I think Happy’s napping.”

“Oh. Okay.”

When they got back to Paige’s room, Toby sat down on the bed. Paige leaned against the wall, searching for a safe conversation topic, something that would not send Toby into the tears that had been so prevalent in the past few days.

“Happy said you were unusually humble at the medical conference last week,” she said finally, a small smile on her face. She’d meant it as a sort of light-hearted joke, but Toby nodded seriously; he seemed to sober instantly. Paige braced herself for any possibly-impending sobs, but he didn’t started crying.

“I guess.”

“Hey, you okay?”

“Yeah, it’s just…” He shrugged. “I’m glad I’m not living that kind of life anymore.”

“What kind of life?”

“You know, being famous.”

“You didn’t like the notoriety of it?”

“No, that’s the thing -- I _loved_ it. I loved people coming up to me and asking my opinion of things and acting like everything I said was the word of God. It made me feel invincible, like I was so much smarter and so much better than everyone else. And now, looking back, I realized it… it fed my addiction, I think.”

Paige furrowed her eyebrows. She didn’t mean to open up such an emotionally-heavy can of worms right after a funeral, but she didn’t want to cut the conversation off now. “How so?”

“I don’t know, I just… I’d go to the a poker game and think ‘I’m ten times as smart as any of these guys, I can beat them in my sleep’. It made gambling feel less like an addiction and more like something I did because I was good at it, because it was an easy way to make money.” He shook his head. “I don’t know if I’m making any sense. I guess I just feel like part of recovery, for me at least, is learning to be humble. And going to that medical conference made me realize that that world kept me from doing that.”

“There were a lot of ‘that’-s in that last sentence,” Paige said slowly, “but I think I understand what you’re saying.”

“And seeing Quincy there…” Toby shook his head. “I don’t know, it just reminded me of who I used to be. How I treated Amy. How I used to treat Happy, and everyone else on the team, before I quit.” He looked at her, eyes red, though she couldn't tell if it was from alcohol or tears. “I don’t want to go back to that place again, Paige. You all deserve so much more than that. So much more than me.”

Paige grabbed Toby’s hand and squeezed it. “Stop, Toby. Don’t do this to yourself. Don’t go there. That I’m-not-worthy-of-my-love-ones headspace, it’s bad news, not to mention not true.” Paige wanted to point out the irony that Happy had said nearly the same thing a few hours before, but she didn’t feel at liberty to reveal that.

Toby slumped forward on the bed, not responding.

“Come on, it’s never a good idea to examine your life when you’re drunk. If you want to have this conversation, we can have it when you’re sober. But Toby, just remember this: you’re not the same you you were when you were with Amy. You have a year of sobriety under your belt. A year of twelve-step work. That changes a person, trust me.”

He looked up at her, his eyes looking miserable. “You think?”

“Definitely. But, seriously, you’re too drunk to be talking about this. Let’s just watch TV or something, okay? You need to do something mindless.”

“TV sounds good.”

“Alright then.” Paige got up to turn on the TV while Toby lay back in bed. She flipped to the first exciting thing she found -- it looked like some eighties’ action movie -- and sat on the bed beside Toby. Within five minutes, he was snoring quietly. Paige turned off the TV, flicked off the light, and slipped out of the room to let him rest.


	39. Chapter 39

 

The team got back to LA in the early afternoon of the next day. Happy took Toby, who was sad and still slightly hungover, back to their apartment.

When they got into their living room, Toby slid onto the sofa. Happy wanted to sit with him, but she was itching to go for a run -- she hadn’t worked out since before they left for the medical conference.

“Hey, Toby,” she said. He looked up at her. “Would you mind if I go running?” It felt odd to be asking permission, but she didn’t want to just leave him.

“Oh, yeah, sure, go. I’ll probably just read a book or something.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course.” He smiled weakly. “You should go.”

“Okay. I’ll be back in less than an hour, probably.”

“Seriously, Hap, take as long as you like. I’m not going anywhere.”

Happy nodded. “Alright.” She went into their bedroom to change.

After she pulled off her pants, she started digging through her dresser for her running legging, and she caught sight of herself in the full-length mirror on the wall.

Since she had gotten her cast off, her leg muscles had thickened and she had lost that little bulge of stomach fat. The scar on her left leg had faded as well -- she could only see it if the light was good -- but, as she ran her fingers over it, she could still feel the tough, healed-over line on her skin.

For a brief moment, she allowed herself to imagine her own funeral.

Toby would arrange it. Of that, she was certain. He had been hands-off in the preparations for his father’s funeral, but he would without question want to plan hers. She wanted a green burial, so there wouldn’t be a casket at the memorial, just a picture of her. He would get blue gardenias, the only flowers she’d ever told him she liked. He would get enough gardenias to drown the whole funeral home. The service would be small, probably -- the team, her father, maybe Ray, if anyone could find him.

Then, after the reception ended and everyone went home, Paige would ask if Toby wanted her to come over and he would refuse, and then he would find the closest poker game and start gambling. Of that, she was also certain.

Happy didn’t know much about addiction -- sometimes, she felt, she knew much, much too little about it -- but she could tell that she was a major force in Toby’s sobriety. She’d instigated it, after all. And she noticed him clinging to her sometimes, and she had to assume it was because he was feeling the urge to gamble.

In light of that, she felt sure that, if she were to die, he would go back to his old lifestyle. He’d quit Scorpion -- too many bad memories -- and go back to getting beat up by bookies in back alleys. When she imagined herself dying, that was always her final conclusion: it would ruin Toby. She didn’t fear death, only the pain that hers would cause him.

She shook her head and then went back to digging through her clothes. There were too many times she’d almost died -- drowning in a submarine, stuck in a burning smart building, standing next to a nuclear reactor that was about to explode. Driving into a tree going one hundred miles per hour. She’d gone done this path before, and it always led to an awful feeling of wanting to quit her job, which she knew didn’t _really_ want to do. So she just tried not to think about.

When she finished changing, she walked towards their front door. Before she left, she turned to Toby, who was still on the couch.

“Hey, Toby?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you. You know that, right?”

Toby smiled. “ ‘Course I do. Have a good run.”

Happy nodded, slipped out the door, and was gone.

As soon as the door shut behind her, Toby took a deep breath. He had always considered himself an extrovert -- he loved to talk, as Walter chided him for so often -- and it was not until recently that he began to appreciate the beauty of solitude. When he was alone, there was no one to distract him from his own thoughts, and, for a long time, that scared him. Now, though, with a year of sobriety in his rearview mirror, with gambling’s being no longer an option to numb out his more noxious thoughts, Toby had learned to cope with, to even enjoy, being without company.

At this moment, though, it might not have been the best idea to isolate himself from Happy. Since arriving in New York, he’d had trouble thinking of anything but gambling. He’d hoped it be better when he was home, but even now his cravings were taking over. Normally, Happy helped distract him from that, but he hated for her to see him like this -- sad and distracted. And it wasn’t like he could deny her exercise just so she could babysit him.

If Christine were here, she would suggest journaling or meditation -- the go-to GA cures to gambling cravings. But Toby just didn’t have the energy to try either method right then, so he picked up the copy of the _American Journal of Psychiatry_ that was on the coffee table -- it was last month’s issue, but he didn’t really care -- and started flipping through the pages to try to distract himself.

* * *

 Happy had a three-mile route that circled from her apartment to the garage and back that she normally took on her runs, but today she felt like going another way. Some part of her wanted to get lost, to feel the raw fear of not knowing where she was, but she’d lived in LA long enough to know her way around most everywhere. So she ended up, almost unconsciously, running to her father’s shop.

She hadn’t seen him in a few weeks, not since after Toby had drinks with him, and she didn’t know if he still went to his garage on Wednesdays. Sure enough, though, when she walked into the shop -- he’d added a bell to the door; it chimed when she pushed it open -- he was wiping his greasy hands with a dirty rag and staring at the shiny body of an ‘09 Chevy truck. His eyes lit up when he saw her.

“Happy! How are you?”

She accepted his hug; he was careful to avoid getting grease on her.

“Good. How have you been?”

“Fine. Man, it’s been a while, hasn’t it? A few weeks, at least?”

“Something like that, yeah.”

“Wow. So what have you been up to? Save the word recently? I keep an eye on the news for you guys, you know.”

Happy smiled. “I know. We haven’t actually been working for a few days, though.”

“Oh, really? Why not?”

“Well… Toby’s dad just died.”

Patrick’s eyes widened. “Oh, no, really? I’m so sorry to hear that.”

“Yeah, it was pretty sudden. Toby and I were at a medical conference when we heard. Then there was the funeral planning, and then we had to fly out to New York for it, so.”

“Is that where his dad lived?”

“Yeah. Toby’s from Brooklyn, but after he moved out here, his dad moved to Albany.”

“Okay. How’s he doing?”

“You know, it’s been pretty tough.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

“No, I think -- I think he’ll be okay. But I did want to talk to you.”

“Oh, alright.” He leaned onto his workbench. “What’s up?”

“Um.” Happy moved to sit down next to him. “Look, Dad, I know you don’t love Toby. And I know that’s kind of… a source of tension between us. But after this funeral, I just… I don’t want that to be the reason we never see each other. If you really can’t stand my being with him, then I guess that’s that, and you and I won’t talk. But I don’t want it to be like that. So…” Happy trailed off.

“Happy.” Patrick place the wrench he was holding down on his work bench and walked over to her. “Oh, Happy. I never meant it to be some kind of ultimatum, like if you didn’t break up with Toby I wouldn’t ever talk to you again. I’m your father. My job is to love you no matter what. I don’t have to love your boyfriend.” He grinned. “But Toby’s kind of growing on me, anyway.”

Happy returned his smile. “Okay.”

“Can you stay a while? I might have a few sodas in the back.”

“Oh, I’m actually in the middle of a run right now. I should probably head back and shower. But what about this weekend? I could come over on Sunday, if you’re free.”

“It’s a date.”

“Alright, then. I’m going to…” She motioned to the door she had come in.

“Go, go. Have a nice rest of your run.”

“Thanks.”

Happy stood up and walked out the door to continue her run, the bell chiming behind her.


	40. Chapter 40

 When Happy returned from her run, Toby was still on the sofa, reading a science magazine. Happy had flipped through an issue from that same periodical once, a few months ago, wondering what was in them that interested her boyfriend so much. It was full of the kinds of articles where she only understood every third word. Perhaps, she had thought, if she understood what the articles were saying, they’d be interesting.

He looked up when he heard her walk in.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey.”

“How was your run?”

“Good.”

“It was kind of long, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah.” She considered leaving it at that, without offering any more explanation, but she knew he’d be able to tell she was keeping something from him. “I ended up running past my dad’s shop, so I stopped to say hi.”

"Oh? How is he doing?”

"Fine. I’m going to see him on Saturday.”

"That’ll be nice.”

“Mm-hm.”

An awkward silence filled the room. After a few seconds, Happy said she was going to shower and then walked into their bathroom.

When she was gone, Toby fished his phone out of his pocket. He had never had reason to call Patrick before; he had to look up the number to his body shop online.

Patrick picked up on the second ring.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Patrick? This is Toby. Toby Curtis.”

“Oh, hi Toby!” The mechanic sounded a little more excited to hear from him than Toby had expected. “How are you doing?”

“Oh, you know, hanging in there.”

“Right, right. Happy told me about the funeral -- I’m so sorry for your loss. If there’s anything I can do…”

“Well, actually, that’s kind of why I’m calling.”

“Oh, really? Is there something I can do?” Patrick sounded surprised -- he’d obviously offered the whole anything-I-can-do thing without expecting Toby to say yes to it -- but eager to help.

“Well, kind of. It’s just that, losing my dad like that made me think of you and Happy. And I know we met up a few weeks ago…”

“...Yes?”

“I just -- I know you don’t like me very much.”

“That’s not--”

“It’s okay,” Toby interrupted. “You don’t have to deny it. I’m an addict, and I get that that’s not a good thing. But I’m working _so hard_. And I’m not asking for you to suddenly like me or commend me for that. But I just want you to know that everything I’m doing, I’m doing for Happy. She makes me want to be a better person. It’s all for her. And I… After what’s happened, I’d hate to stand between you and Happy having a relationship, you know?”

Patrick chuckled on the other end of the line, making Toby think he and Happy had had a similar conversation when she stopped by earlier.

“Look,” Toby continued when Patrick didn’t say anything, “I know us being friends might be a lot to ask, but I was hoping maybe we could at least... try to get along. For Happy’s sake?”

“I’d like to try to do that, Toby.”

Toby smiled. “Great.”

“Hey, I think Happy said you’re a Mets fan, right?”

Toby laughed. “Well, I was born and raised in Brooklyn, so, yeah.”

“I think they’re playing the Dodgers in two weeks. How about you come over and we watch the game?”

“That sounds perfect.”

“Alright, some people are going to show up in a few hours expecting their truck’s crank shaft to be replaced, so I better go. But I look forward to seeing you soon.”

“Me too, Patrick. Bye.”

“Bye.”

* * *

After Happy had finished showering -- avoiding looking at her scar the whole time -- she went into the living room, where Toby was still reading on the sofa. She walked over to the bookshelf of her books, on the wall that split the living room and kitchen. She might not understand medical journals, but she was a sucker for a good spy novel.

She grabbed one of the books she hadn’t read yet and went to join her boyfriend. She slid down next to him, shifting so he legs lay on top of his. Toby didn’t say anything, but he laid a gentle hand on her knee and then started massaging her thigh gently.

Soon, Happy was engrossed in the world of fictional Soviet espionage. Still, though, she stayed aware of Toby’s hand on her leg. Every time it passed her scar, it would linger there, and Happy would be drawn away from her fictitious spies and thrown back into the turmoil of wondering what would have happened if she had died in that car accident, if she were to die on a mission.

Eventually, Happy got sick of thinking about it, so she marked her page in her book and then leaned forward and kissed Toby.

He was taken slightly aback; this was the most forward Happy had been about affection since the news of his father’s death. But, in the last week, he’d missed this. He kissed her back.

Soon, they moved into the bedroom, and all of Happy’s worries about death were, for the moment, completely forgotten.


	41. Chapter 41

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy new year, everyone!

Walter said Toby and Happy could take off as long as he needed for his father’s death. (Toby knew that that really meant that Walter would give them about a week off and then start calling incessantly with questions about Toby’s well-being which were thinly-veiled inquiries into when he and Happy were coming back to work.) But on Thursday night, as Happy climbed into bed next to him, he said, “I want to go to work tomorrow.”

Happy raised her eyebrows. “Really? So soon?”

“Yeah. I think it’d be good to get my mind off of things. Plus, tomorrow’s Friday. I could just go in for one day and then take the weekend off. It’s perfect.”

“Well, if you think so, then we’ll go.”

“Thanks, Hap.” He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek, then rolled over and went to bed.

* * *

The next morning, Happy and Toby arrived at work ten minutes after nine. The rest of the team was already there. Someone -- Paige, Toby guessed -- had hung a big _Welcome!_ banner over Toby’s desk. It was the same one from way back when Happy had returned from work after breaking her leg; it made him smile.

“Hey, good morning!” Paige said when she saw them. “How are you guys doing?”

“Ready to save the world,” Toby said. “What does Homeland have for us today?”

“Nothing in the world-saving department, unfortunately. Mostly we’re just finishing the paperwork on that museum-security case from last week.” Paige went over to her desk and picked up two manila folders, holding one to Happy and Toby each. “Cooper’s angry because our papers are a few days late already, but if you could both get your reports to me before lunch, I might be able to talk her off the ledge.”

Toby took the folder. “That’s what we pay you the big bucks for: talking normals off of ledges.”

Paige chuckled. “Well, I’m sorry it’s going to be kind of boring day--”

Just then, Cabe and Tim walked in, and Paige cut off to look at them.

“Is everyone here? Good,” the older agent said. “I just got a call from Cooper. The UN just voted on a resolution about their involvement in the Middle East--”

“Oh, that keeps popping up on the news,” Happy interrupted.

“Yeah, well, apparently some extremists hackers from San Francisco heard about the action and didn’t like it. In protest, they’ve hacked into Green Brook’s security system.”

“Green Brook?” Paige looked confused.

“It’s a new supermax prison outside of San Francisco,” said Cabe.

“What can the hackers do, make all the security cameras go haywire?” asked Paige.

“The cell doors in this prison are automated. They’re threatening to release every single inmate,” said Cabe.

“A thousand angry inmates versus two dozen guards,” said Tim. “What do you think happens?”

“Sounds like two dozen dead bodies and a thousand freed criminals,” said Toby.

“Not unless we find the hackers before they act on their threats,” said Cabe. “Come on, grab your stuff. There’s a jet waiting to take us to San Francisco.”

Everyone dispersed to back their bags, and Happy came up to Toby.

“Hey,” she said. “Don’t you have a three o’clock GA meeting? Do you want to stay home?”

“No, it’ll be fine.”

“Are you sure? You missed last week’s meeting for the conference, too, right?”

“Yeah, but I’m fine, really. Thanks for looking out for me, but don’t worry.”

Happy shrugged. “If you say so.” She walked over to her desk.

As Toby was zipping up his satchel, Paige passed, saying, “I guess it won’t be as boring a day as I’d thought.”

* * *

Once they arrived, Cabe suggested setting up in the local FBI office -- to stay away from any angry convicts -- but Walter insisted on being in the prison to have the best access to their security system. So the team, after greeting the warden, gathered in the guards’ break room. Walter and Sylvester got out their laptops. Toby and Paige went with Happy went to find the control room to see if there was a hands-on way she could block the hackers’ attacks.

The control room was manned by a single young guard, who seemed happy to leave as soon they arrived. Happy immediately started tinkering with the wires hanging out of the computers. Toby looked at the video on the monitors to keep himself occupied.

“Let me guess,” Paige said. “You could tell me anything I want to know about any of these guys, right?”

Toby grinned. He knew Paige was humoring him -- she normally ignored his attempts to show off his behaviorist skills -- but he was excited enough not to care.

“Of course I can. Anyone you’re curious about?”

Paige pointed to a large man sitting at a card table. It took Toby less than a second to place the game: craps. One of his old favorites.

_Call Nick. You still remember his number. He probably still has those Friday night games. If the case ends quickly, you could still make the game tonight._

Toby had almost grown used to the random, vehement outbursts of gambling urges by this point. But he was still distracted by the thoughts; he forgot he was supposed to be profiling the card player.

“Toby? Hello?” Paige said after a minute. Her finger was still pointing to the screen.

“Oh, right.” Toby could only get his thoughts together enough to make up a lie. “He’s in here for drug running. He’s a big guy in prison, maybe a prison gang leader. He likes playing cards, obviously, but even if you beat him, you don’t collect; you’d be too scared to.”

“Um, it looks like some people are beating him right now.”

Sure enough, when Toby looked back at the video, the man was pushing a couple cigarettes over to the inmate sitting across from him.

“Right, well, see, that’s because…”

“Got it!” Happy said, to Toby’s relief.

“Got what?” Paige asked.

“This.” She held up a small, black box.

“What is that?”’

“We have to get it to Walter. I’ll explain on the way.”

Happy ran out, and Paige and Toby rushed to follow her.

* * *

Even after Happy’s explanation, Toby and Paige didn’t really understand what the black box did, but it was, apparently, an exceptionally-effective anti-hacker device. When Walter got it, he hooked it up to his laptop and, within sixty seconds, he said he’d stopped the hackers.

“That’s it?” Cabe asked. “Just like that?”

“Just like that. Here.” Walter wrote something down on a post-it and handed it to Cabe before continuing, “I just emailed you the IP address of the hackers. They’re actually in DC. Don’t ask me why they targeted a Californian prison--”

“Bigger prisons out here,” Toby offered. “Plus, it’s far enough away that any escaped inmates probably wouldn’t cause them any problems.”

“Okay,” Walter said, irritated at being interrupted. “But anyway, get that IP address to DCPD and they can handle it.”

Cabe whipped out his phone and left the room to make the call. Sylvester clapped Walter on the back, and Walter congratulated Happy on her find.

“Well,” Tim said, “that was fast. When’s the last time a case went that smoothly?”

“Never,” Paige laughed. “Man, I don’t even have to call the sitter. We’ll probably be home by eight.”

_Nick’s poker game starts at nine._

“Hey,” Toby said, a bit too loudly, in an attempt to drown out his thoughts. “How about we go out to celebrate? Drinks and karaoke, maybe? We saved a lot of lives today.”

“That sounds fun,” Tim offered.

“I’m free,” Sylvester said.

“Then it’s a plan.”

* * *

When the team landed back in LA -- fifteen minutes before eight, as Paige had predicted -- Cabe drove them all to Sully's, a bar near the airport. It was relatively uncrowded, for a Friday night. Toby ordered a round of Cosmos for everyone -- besides Walter, whose encounter with Long Island iced teas had left him sober for life -- causing Happy to roll her eyes. Soon, though, she and everyone else started joking and laughing.

After a few rounds of drinks, even Happy’s and Sylvester’s inhibitions were lowered, and the entire group was giddy. Karaoke started at ten thirty, and Paige agreed to do a duet with Toby. They got up and did a less-than-skillful rendition of Sinatra’s “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire”. Afterwards, Cabe got up to sing “Born to Run”, and Tim agreed to do “Say Say Say” with Sylvester. Walter refused to even look at the stage, but, after Happy had had a Cosmo and five shots of whiskey, she was drunk enough to do “Endless Love” with Toby.

By the time they finished, it was close to midnight, and Paige was getting texts from her sitter. Walter agreed to drive everyone home, seeing as Cabe had had a few scotches too many to get behind the wheel. As they were piling into Cabe’s SUV, Toby realized that Nick’s Friday-night game’s start time had come and went and he hadn’t even noticed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think of myself as pretty uncreative at thinking up cases, so I normally try to glaze over the details of cases if they ever need to be mentioned in fics. But I couldn’t think of less-specific way to write this one. Sorry if it was boring and/or the resolution of it seemed rushed!


	42. Chapter 42

 

The next morning, Toby woke up before Happy. He had a slight headache, but he was less hungover than he would’ve expected, after drinking so much the night before.   

He slipped out of bed to make some coffee. As their coffee maker was bubbling and he was digging through the corner cabinet to find his favorite Harvard mug, he realized he was actually happy. His head hurt and he was tired and he really needed to shower, but, for the first time since he got that call from the Albany police, he felt perfectly content.

A few minutes after the coffee was finished, Happy stumbled out of the bedroom, rubbing her temple.

“Jeez,” she said, “my head hasn’t hurt this badly since I had to wean myself off oxycodone. Is the room spinning, or is it just me?”

“Here,” Toby said, offering her a glass of water. “You’re probably dehydrated. This will help.”

Happy accepted the water and sipped it. “God, I’m never drinking again.”

Toby laughed.

“Oh my God, do you have to be so _loud_?” she snapped.

Toby quieted immediately, but he kept a smile on his face. He liked the bluntness she was showing this morning. The hangover was stopping her from tiptoeing around him, which she’d been doing since his father died, and, while he appreciated her efforts, he missed his old Happy.

“Can I get you some food?” he asked. “I could make pancakes.”

“No, I feel too sick to eat. I’m kind of just in an alone mood.”

Toby nodded, recognizing the code word. “Alright, I’ll go over to Sly’s. Just remember to keep drinking water. And try to eat something if you can.”

“Yeah, sure. I think I’m just going to lie down some more.”

Happy slinked off to the bedroom. Toby followed her to change out of his pajamas and then grabbed his car keys and headed down to the parking lot.

When he got to his car, he dialed Sylvester’s number.

“Hello?” Sylvester’s voice was ]thick with sleep. Toby checked the clock on the dashboard; it was already eleven, much past the time Sylvester normally woke up.

“Hey, Sly. Are you home?”

“Yeah. I just woke up. Aren’t you hungover?”

“Not really. You?”

“I had, like, twelve drinks. Of course I’m hungover.”

“So I’m guessing you don't want me coming over?”

“Um, I’m hopefully going back to sleep as soon as this phone call ends, but I guess you can come over if you want to be alone.”

“No, don’t worry about it. I’ll find something else to do.”

“Okay, bye.”

After hanging up, Toby tapped his fingers on the steering wheel for a minute, unsure of what to do. The only member of the team who wouldn’t be hungover would be Walter, but he wasn’t really in a mood to deal with his boss. On a whim, he took his phone back out and dialed Phil’s number.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Phil? It’s Toby, from GA.”

“Oh, hey Toby. How are you doing?”

“Good. And yourself?”

“Fine. Hey, we missed you at the meeting yesterday. You didn’t come last Friday, either, did you?”

“No, yesterday my work flew me out to San Francisco at the last minute, and I was at that medical conference last Friday, so.”

Toby braced himself for Phil to give him some speech about how meetings have to come first in life, but instead Phil just said, “Oh, I see.”

“So,” Toby said after a pause, “I was wondering if you wanted to grab coffee or something this morning?”

“Sure! I can be ready to meet in half an hour, if that works for you.”

“Sounds great. Kovalsky’s again?”

“Sure. I’ll see you there.”

* * *

Forty minutes later, Toby and Phil were sitting down in a booth at Kovalsky’s, two cups of coffee in between them. Toby didn’t really find Phil all the interesting, but Christine kept telling him to make friends in the program, so they got together every so often.

“So, how have you been doing?” Toby asked. “We haven’t talked in awhile.”

“I’ve been fine. My youngest just started middle school, which was a big change for her. I think she and her brother might fly out to visit me over their winter break, which would be nice; they haven’t seen my new house yet.”

“They’re still in Missouri, right?”

“Right. I normally see them at least a few times a year, but since I moved out here, it’s been so busy, you know?”

Toby frowned. The conversation was starting to remind him of phone calls he’d had with his father from his old dorm in Cambridge.

_Don’t you want to come visit, Dad? I can show you all around Boston._

_Oh, Toby, things are so busy here, what with your mom and everything. Now’s just not a good time._

“But what about you? What’s new?” Phil asked.

Toby didn’t want to mention the funeral -- he thought he might have trouble hiding his contempt for Phil’s hands-off relationship with his children if they started talking about Toby’s father.

“Like I said, I went to a medical conference last weekend,” he said.

“Oh? How was that?”

“It was nice. I used to go to those kinds of things all the time, when I was practicing, but I hadn’t been to one in years. It was nice to see some familiar faces. I actually ran into my ex-fiancée’s new husband.”

“Wow, that must have been quite the encounter.”

“Yeah, it was definitely interesting. I never really liked him, for obvious reasons. But I’m in a pretty good place right now. It wasn’t as off-putting as I would’ve expected it to be.”

“Well, hey, that’s good.” Phil looked down at his coffee cup and tapped his fingers on the ceramic mug.

“Hey, you okay?”

“Oh, you know, I’ve just been having a tough time lately.”

“A tough time?”

“Yeah. My old friend Eric just moved out here. He runs a poker game on Saturday afternoons.”

Toby raised his eyebrows. He could tell -- much to his surprise -- that Phil was actually considering going to this game.

“So, there’s one happening right now?”

“Yeah, and I keep thinking about how much fun his games were when I went to them in Colorado.”

“Don’t tell me you want to go.”

Phil looked out the window, refusing to make eye contact with Toby. “Just one game wouldn’t hurt, would it?”

Toby could hear Christine nearly screaming in his ear. _Yes, one game would hurt. One game would lead to two games, which would lead to three, which would lead to losing your entire life’s savings, not to mention your sobriety._

But all he said was, “I don’t know, would it?”


	43. Chapter 43

Worry was growing in Happy’s chest. It was close to midnight; Toby was still out, and he hadn’t called. He always called -- normally multiple times. Most days, when they weren’t together, she got a steady stream of texts updating her on his location (and professing his love for her) about once every twenty minutes.  

He never stayed out this late without telling her. He never left her like this, sitting alone in their quiet apartment, terrified that he’d wrapped his car around a tree or been kidnapped by an old bookie.

Her stark aloneness was starting to bring up awful memories -- memories of her father leaving her, of her foster parents sending her back to the orphanage. A part of her, deep down, past Toby and Scorpion and happiness, was sending up I-told-you-so messages.  _ Everyone always leaves. It was your fault to trust him, anyway.  _

She’d texted Sylvester, who hadn’t heard from Toby since that morning, when he’d told the psychiatrist he was too hungover to hang out. She’d called Toby’s cell phone once; he hadn’t picked up. She wanted so badly to call him again -- for him to answer, so she could hear his voice and know he was okay, he wasn’t gone, he hadn’t abandoned her -- but every part of her brain was screaming against it.  _ Don’t be clingy. Don’t be dependent. Don’t be a bother. _

The silence in the apartment was oppressive. She tried to turn on the TV, so that at least her ears had something to do other than notice that there was no other heartbeat in the vicinity, but the batteries in the remote were dead. 

Perfect. Something to fix. Just the kind of distraction she needed.

Happy jumped up and went to the kitchen. They kept spare batteries in a junk drawer beside the fridge. But, as her hand was on the drawer’s handle, she saw her cell phone on the breakfast counter, where she’d placed it in a fruitless attempt to put the idea of calling Toby out her mind.

Screw it, she was calling him again.

She dialed his number and pressed the phone to her ear, hugging herself with her free arm. The electronic rings came through loudly, seeming to echo in the quiet apartment.

Four rings, five, six passed. His voice came on the other end, and for a brief moment Happy felt relief flooding over her. But then she realized it was his voicemail recording.  _ You’ve reached the phone of Dr. Tobias M. Curtis. I’m not here right now -- probably off saving the world or something -- so please leave a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as the Department of Homeland Security doesn’t need me anymore. _

Happy listened to the whole thing, letting her boyfriend’s cockiness sink in. When it was over, she stood very still for a minute. Inside, crazy, irrational thoughts were coming up, trying to convince her that Toby never really loved her, that their entire relationship had been some sort of cruel joke.

Inside the silent apartment, those thoughts were sounding less and less crazy.

A defense mechanism she’d had her entire life then took over: anger. She threw her phone on the floor, not caring that the screen shattered. She went down the hall to where her drawing of a motorcycle engine was hung up. She tore her the frame off the wall and kicked it so the glass broke. She barely felt the small shards of glass cutting into her foot. 

This anger was familiar to Happy; it needed to destroy something. After the picture frame came Toby’s Harvard mug. She walked into the kitchen, her foot leaving small spots of blood on the floor. The mug was still in the sink, stained with his morning coffee. She lifted it and threw it down on the ground as hard as she could, so it shattered next to her phone. Pieces flew everywhere, rocketing across the kitchen tiles. 

Once the mug was broken, she felt the urge to punch something. Next to where her drawing used to hang were a half dozen framed photos of her and Toby and the team that he’d put up when she’d moved in. One by one, she punched them with her right hand, until there were piles of glass on the floor and her hand was covered in blood. 

There was one framed photo left in the apartment. It was that picture Paige had taken a week after Toby had quit gambling, the one that had once spurred her to call Christine with her suspicions about Toby’s wanting to relapse; she’d brought it home from her desk at work a few weeks ago. It was on the nightstand in their bedroom. She went into the room, picked up the photo, and threw it into the wall. The frame broke and the wall dented.

With that, the anger began to fade, an intense tiredness took over Happy. She knew she should probably clean the cuts on her hand and foot, but instead she just crawled into bed, too exhausted even to cry.


	44. Chapter 44

The next morning, Happy woke up as if hungover; her head was foggy and there was a sour taste in her mouth. Light streamed into their bedroom. Slowly, piece by piece, the previous night reassembled itself in her mind.

As she started to remember, she felt the familiar achy feeling that past anger always left inside of her; rage had a tendency to leave bile in the back of her throat. The blood on her hand and foot had left small brown spots on their white sheets. The cuts had scabbed over, but they looked angry and red. She looked around for her phone to check for any word from Toby before remembering she had smashed it. 

The sound of footsteps came in from the hallway, and Happy realized it had been the creak of the front door’s opening that had woken her. Before she could react, Toby appeared in the doorway. 

“Happy,” he breathed.

Happy was not often jealous of Toby -- they each had their strengths, and hers were normally more useful, anyway -- but, in that moment, she found herself wishing she had his ability to psychoanalyze. She wanted to suck everything from that word, it’s intonation and decibel and context, until she figured out where he had been the night before. 

But, based off the slump in his shoulders and the redness in his eyes, she was pretty sure she already knew. 

She pushed herself out of bed. “Toby.”

She would have asked if he was okay, if it had not been immediately clear that he simultaneously was and so, so was not. 

“Are you alright?” he asked.

“Am _I_ alright?”

“I saw the glass in the hallway. There was blood on the floor.”

Happy glanced down at her hand. “I’m fine.”

He nodded before continuing, “I -- I’m sorry.” With those words, she knew her suspicion of a relapse had been right. 

“I called you -- twice.” Happy did not need to elaborate. Toby knew what that second call had meant for her, how hard it had been, how she would have felt when he didn’t pick up.

“I know.”

“I thought you were gone.”

“Happy…”

“I thought you were _dead_.”

“I’m not dead.”

Happy threw her hands up in exasperation. “Well, hallelujah! How much money did you lose, by the way? A thousand dollars? A hundred thousand?”

Toby didn’t respond.

“Jesus. I can’t believe it. We just had a _party_ for you. What, did that year never happen? Did you just get _bored_ of not gambling?”

“You don’t understand what it’s like!” Suddenly, Toby was shouting. Mountains of anger that had been growing in him since he quit gambling, since Amy left him, since he was born, came up and were being thrown at Happy. “You don’t understand how it feels to want to do something _all the time_ and know that you can _never_ do it _ever_. Do you get that?”

Happy’s face twisted into a pained frowned, tears welling in her eyes. Toby didn’t want to do this; Happy didn’t deserve it. But he was just so tired, and she was making him feel worse about himself than he already felt. He didn’t feel capable of anything but rage; he kept yelling.

“There’s not a single second in the entire fucking day that I don’t think about gambling, and I’m not allowed to gamble _ever_ for the rest of my fucking life. Can you even _imagine_ that, Happy?”

“Is that true?” Happy asked quietly, her voice cracking.

No, it wasn’t, not really. There were plenty of stretches of time -- minutes, hours, days, even, sometimes -- that Toby forgot all about gambling. Some people in his meeting, those who had been sober for decades, claimed they didn’t feel the urge to gamble at all anymore.

But Toby said, “Yeah. Kind of sucks, doesn’t it? Especially when your girlfriend’s giving you grief about it.”

Happy’s frown turned into a glare. “You don’t want any grief from me? Fine. Go gamble. Do whatever you fucking want, Toby.”Happy stormed past him, opened their front door, and ran out.

It took two full minutes after the door slammed shut behind her for Toby’s hands to stop shaking. A small part of him realized that this was not how he had wanted the conversation to go. He had wanted to apologize, to make up with Happy and then go find Christine and tell her what had happened.

But that small part of him was totally overwhelmed by the voice in his head reminding him that he was alone now, he could gamble.

He was too tired to drive anywhere, and the casinos wouldn’t be open for hours, anyway. Instead, he grabbed his laptop off the kitchen counter and went to his favorite online-poker website.

The website’s bright red-and-gold header greeted him like the hug of an old friend. He had deleted his account over a year ago, back when he had quit, but it would only take a minute to make a new one. He pressed the big “Create Account!” button, but, before the new page could load, an error message came up. _Error: No internet connections available. Please check server and try again._

Toby groaned aloud before fiddling around with the wifi settings. It was useless; something must be wrong with their router. He could go check it, or just go find an internet café to work from -- there was one around the corner, within walking distance -- but instead he just slipped off his chair, onto the floor, and curled into a ball, letting the self-hate consume him.


	45. Chapter 45

Happy didn’t have a destination in mind when she left their apartment; she just wanted to be _gone_. Her legs ached to run, to push the ground behind her with enough force to forget about the last twelve hours. She even started to jog, but she wasn’t dressed properly for it -- she wasn’t wearing a bra, or any shoes, and her pajama pants kept sliding down her hips. So she slowed to a quick walk, arms wrapped around herself, mind spinning. 

Toby had relapsed. He’d been sober for almost a year and then he relapsed. That doesn’t just _happen_.

Except it does. Even at the single Al-Anon meeting Happy had ever gone to, people had talked extensively about the random nature of relapses. Alcoholics who hadn’t had a drink in years would suddenly, inexplicably, be found passed out drunk on their kitchen floors. Drug addicts would get through parents’ deaths, divorces, layoffs, and bankruptcies without even thinking of using, only to overdose in the middle of a perfectly normal, non-stressful week. _It sucks and it’s sad and it doesn’t make any sense, but it happens_ , someone from the meeting had said.

Happy had listened to the stories the way people listen to cautionary tales about kidnappers and rapists: those things happen, but not to _me_. She couldn’t believe Toby would relapse. That time in her life, where she would watch him come to work looking ashamed and exhausted and she didn’t dare ask how much he had lost the night before, that time was in their past. It didn’t fit in their future.

Happy chewed her lip as she walked, her brain starting to try to rationalize what had happened.

_Maybe it was his dad’s dying. Maybe that sent him over the edge. Or it could have been seeing Quincy last week and thinking about Amy. Or maybe--_

Happy stopped walking for a minute as the thought came to her. _Maybe it was yesterday morning when I snapped at him for being too loud. Maybe it’s my fault._

Her lower lip started to tremble and she fought back tears. No, that was ridiculous. She snapped at Toby all the time. It couldn’t have been her fault.

Could it have been?

She was still frozen in place, too shocked and guilty to move, when a car pulled up next to her and Paige stuck her head out of the window.

“Hey, Happy! What are you doing out so early on a Sunday?”

Happy turned to Paige, soaking in the woman’s cheerful face. It struck her, how Paige had lived through the same evening she had and didn’t realize a single thing had changed.

“I… Hi,” Happy got out after a minute.

“Hey, is everything okay?”

“I don’t… I mean… I yelled at Toby yesterday.”

Paige furrowed her eyebrows in confusion. Happy realized how she must look -- barely clothed, out early on a Sunday morning, talking incoherently.

“Oh,” Paige said. “Is everything okay?”

“It’s, I mean, well -- no.”

“I mean, did you guys break up?”

Happy shook her head furiously for a second before becoming still again. “No, we didn’t… break up.”

“Happy, are you okay? Are you sick?”

Happy closed her eyes for a minute, forming the words in her head carefully before saying them.

“Toby relapsed yesterday.”

Happy almost expected some sort of movie-esque reaction to the statement, a dramatic piece of music playing in the background or perhaps a car crash down the street. But there was nothing but her words floating gently through the morning air.

“Oh. I see.” Paige’s voice was eerily calm. How was she not freaking out? “Come on, why don’t you come over to my house?”

Happy, too dazed to protest, walked around to climb into the passenger seat, and then Paige drove off.


	46. Chapter 46

Paige hung up from the phone and ran a hand through her hair.

“What did she say?” Happy’s eyes were wide with worry. They were sitting on the couch in Paige’s living room, a hot glass of tea in Happy’s hand. As soon as they had arrived, Paige had put a pot of water on the stove to heat up and then looked up Christine’s phone number from her law firm’s website. Ralph was at Sloan’s house, much to Happy’s relief; she didn’t think she could deal with anyone but Paige right then.

“She said she’d handle it.”

“What does that mean?”

“She’ll probably twelve-step him.”

“ ‘Twelve-step’ him?”

Paige nodded, staring blankly out the window, as if she was trying to focus on something outside and Happy’s questions were barely reaching her. “It’s what they do when someone relapses. The sponsor gathers up a bunch of people from the program and they go over to the addict’s house and talk to him. If it’s successful, they’ll probably take him to a meeting.”

“Should we go over there and help?”

Paige shook her head. “It’s a program thing. Loved ones don’t really go. I don’t know why. But Christine’s been at this for a while. I’m sure she knows what she’s doing.”

“So we just sit here and do nothing?”

Happy was sticking her lower lip out. It wasn’t exactly a pout, but it reminded Paige of the face Ralph made when she brought up their moving to Maine, nearly two years ago.

“Yeah, we just sit here and do nothing.” Paige walked over and sat down next to Happy, taking her hand. “I know, it sucks to feel so powerless, but--”

“If you say something about the serenity prayer right now, I swear I’ll break this mug.”

Paige smiled slightly. “Alright, no Al-Anon talk. How about we do something to get your mind off of it? I just got all the stuff to make snickerdoodles, if you want to do some baking.”

Happy snorted. “I’m a genius. Making snickerdoodles isn’t exactly going to keep my mind busy.” Happy felt a twinge of guilt for sounding so condescending, but it was quickly swallowed up by her numbness.

Paige sighed. “I’m worried about him too, you know,” she said quietly.

Happy knew she should backtrack, apologize for her harshness and accept the baking offer, but couldn’t find a single ounce of benevolence within herself. Instead, she said, “I didn’t come here so you could make me feel any worse.”

Paige frowned. Her childhood had been marked by this dance -- relapse, apologize, sober up, repeat -- and she’d forgotten that Happy had never been through it before. She thought back to how shocked, how saddened, she had been that first time her father had come home drunk, after eighteen months of sobriety. She hadn’t been in the mood to bake cookies.

“Right. I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to make you feel worse. Maybe talking about it would help? What exactly happened?”

Happy took a deep, shaky breath.

“Well, yesterday morning he left to go to Sly’s--”

“Wait, yesterday morning? We were all so hungover. Why did he go to Sly’s place?”

“Because I wanted to be alone,” Happy said, almost without thinking; she and Toby had been in this leaving-the-house rhythm for long enough that it felt natural.

“So you kicked him out?”

“Well, I guess I did, yeah.”

“Does he ever kick you out?”

“Not really. Sometimes I leave when I want to be alone.” Happy shrugged. “I like my space.”

“So this is like an agreement between you two? That you can kick him out whenever?”

“Yeah. It was kind of part of deal when we agreed to move in together.”

“Whoa. That’s so weird.”

Paige realized almost immediately that she probably shouldn’t have said that. She’d been working with geniuses long enough to know that they often didn’t enjoy their idiosyncrasies, little things they do to make the world work, being pointed out as such. But the words were out there, wounding Happy already, and she couldn’t take them back.

“Um, is it? Is it weird?”

Happy tried to ask the question calmly, but her lip was trembling. It _was_ weird. She kicked her boyfriend out of their shared home on a regular basis, just because she wanted to be alone. It was weird and selfish and awful of her; she was a weird and selfish and awful girlfriend.

“Oh, no,” Paige said, backtracking quickly, “I didn’t mean it like that. Different couples have different ways of dealing with stuff. That’s not weird.”

“Oh my God,” Happy said, starting to cry, “it’s my fault. This is my fault. I kicked him out. I drove him to do this, didn’t I?”

“What? Happy, no.” Paige scooted over and wrapped Happy in her arms. “This is _not_ your fault, okay? It’s not one’s fault but Toby’s. Remember the three C’s?”

“What three C’s?”

“It’s an Al-Anon thing. Didn’t they mention it at that meeting you went to? ‘Didn’t cause it, can’t control it, can’t cure it.’ Nothing you did caused this relapse; there’s nothing you can do to help Toby sober up. It’s a battle he has to fight himself.”

Happy leaned forward so she could put her mug of tea down on the coffee table. “But--”

“ _Happy_.” Paige cut her off, reaching out and grabbing her hand. “What happened?”

Happy looked down at the cross-stitch-esque pattern of small cuts on her skin. “I punched some picture frames. And kicked one.”

“Are your feet like this, too?”

“One is.” She slipped her feet out of the blanket to show Paige.

“Oh my goodness. Did you clean these cuts? They could get infected. And there’s all this dried blood. Come on, let’s go to the bathroom. I have to wash you up.”

Happy allowed Paige to lead her into the bathroom. Both women sat down on the floor. Paige wet a washcloth and started gently cleaning Happy’s hand. When all the dried blood was gone, she wrapped the hand in a bandage. Happy tried not to think about how the feeling reminded her of Toby’s cleaning her surgical wounds after her accident.

“Well, the cuts are all scabbed over now,” Paige said as she moved to Happy’s foot. “I guess we’ll just have to hope they don’t get infected.”

“Thank you,” Happy said quietly.

Paige looked at her and smiled. “Of course.”

Something about the look on Paige’s face made Happy start crying again. When Paige finished washing and wrapping her foot, she scooted over so she was next to Happy and wrapped her arms around her again. Happy leaned into Paige, for once allowing herself to be comforted.

 


	47. Chapter 47

A few hours after Happy left, Toby got up, went into the kitchen, and pulled a bottle of whiskey down from the corner cupboard. He couldn’t think of anything to do other than drink until he blacked out. He didn’t even like whiskey, but he wasn’t in the mood to make a Cosmo, and they didn’t have any cranberry juice, anyway. He just wanted to be drunk.

He’d dragged the bottle to the couch, not realizing until after he sat down that he didn’t even grab a glass.

“Screw it,” he muttered, pulling the cap off and taking a gulp directly from the bottle.

He was pretty sure that there were some new episodes of some comedy Happy liked on their DVR, but the TV remote wasn’t sitting on the coffee table, it’s normal home, and Toby didn’t feel like looking for it. So he just sat back, drinking, and let his gaze fall on Happy’s bookshelf.

Toby loved Happy’s books. He loved his books too, of course, his journals and medical textbooks that offered him endless intellectual stimulation. But Happy’s novels appealed to him in a different way.

They weren’t nice sets of books, the kind that were bound with deep-colored leather, the kind that well-educated people set up on overly-expensive mahogany bookshelves and didn’t dare open for fear of cracking their hand-crafted spines. Those kinds of books were abundant in the offices of Toby’s former colleagues, as if having a five-hundred-dollar set of late-eighteenth-century classics hanging behind your desk allowed your hands to more skillfully stitch up broken bodies.

These books, here on Happy’s shelves, were of an entirely different species. They were eclectic, collected over the course of long years, bought at used-book sales and received as gifts. They had been read in the way people read cheap books, pulling them open and cracking their spines with one hand while holding a coffee mug in the other, recklessly sucking up the stories that lay on the cheap, yellowed paper.

These books did not match; they were different shapes and sizes and colors, but they somehow blended into a cozy little wall of literature, coming to the eye gently, like the sight of a welcoming stranger with a warm smile.

Toby laughed. He had gotten himself drunk enough to be comparing books to smiles.

“Why not?” he asked aloud, despite the fact -- or perhaps because of it -- that there was no one there to hear him. “I don’t have any real friends now to smile at me, anyway.”

A knock on the door broke through Toby’s cocoon of self-pity. Toby considered not answering it -- who that he wanted to talk to could be there? Happy wouldn’t come back this soon, if she came back at all. Paige might show up, if Happy had told her what happened -- though that depended on Happy being calm enough to speak, which, Toby thought, might not be the case. And besides, Paige was an alcoholic’s kid; she would know that relapse protocol was contacting the addict’s sponsor.

That left Christine. If someone had contacted her, it was pretty likely that she’d show up. But Toby didn’t want to talk to her -- his veins were still full of relapse adrenaline, which was screaming to avoid anyone who would try to keep him from gambling again. And besides, he was quiet comfortable on the sofa, loving Happy’s books in lieu of loving her.

But the visitor knocked a second time, and then a third, and by the fourth knock Toby figured whoever it was wasn’t going away anytime soon. So he pushed himself up off the couch, took a second to steady himself -- the whiskey was making the room spin -- and stumbled over to the entryway.

Sure enough, when he pulled the front door open, Christine stood in the hallway.

“Toby.” She said it flatly, without relief that he was here, rather than at a casino or in a morgue, without anger that he had thrown away his year of sobriety. Without any feeling at all.

She was flanked by Heather, Francis, and a few other faces he recognized from meetings. Phil, he noticed, was absent. Did Christine know he had relapsed too? Had she called his sponsor, all the way back in Colorado?

Probably not, Toby decided. How would she know? Happy or Paige must have told her that he himself had relapsed, but neither knew about Phil. For all Toby knew, his once-friend was still hunched over a poker table, losing his money and his dignity at the startling pace of someone who hadn’t done so in almost seven years.

“Toby,” Christine repeated. “You’re drinking.”

Toby wondered for a second if he was drunk enough for her to have smelt his inebriation that quickly, but then he realized she was eyeing the whiskey bottle that was still in his hand.

“Astute observation there, Christine.”

“You know, just because alcohol isn’t your drug of choice doesn’t mean it’s okay to use it to drown your emotions.”

Toby ignored her admonishment. “So I’m being twelve-stepped.”

It wasn’t really a question, and Christine didn’t respond to it. “May we come in?”

Toby moved aside and motioned with the whiskey bottle for them to enter. The small group filed past him. There were six of them in all, and Toby brought their names to mind as they passed: Christine, Heather, Francis, Elijah, Ronda, Marcus.

Christine, who had been to their apartment before it had becomes _theirs_ , back when it was still _his_ , sat down comfortably on the sofa. The rest of the addicts followed suit, perching on Happy’s and Toby’s living room furniture nonchalantly, as if they were there for a party. The only seat left for Toby was the armchair.

“So, Toby,” Christine started when they were all sitting; it was the third time she had said his name since arriving ninety seconds earlier. “How are you doing?”

Every part of him urged for him to hide his relapse -- as if everyone in the room didn’t already know -- and so the only word that could come out of his mouth was, “Fine.”

Christine nodded like a parent listening to a child tell an obvious lie.

“You’ve missed a couple meetings.” Francis’ voice was soft, without its characteristic confident bellow

“I missed two meetings.”

“You have to make meetings your first priority,” Christine and Heather said in unison. It was a refrain offered at nearly every meeting he’d ever been too.

“I’m sorry, I guess I thought I could skip one for my father’s funeral.”

Everyone was quiet for a minute. No one met Toby’s eyes, which were darting accusingly from person to person, daring them to contest the validity of his excuse.

Christine’s calm voice broke the silence.

“How have your meditation exercises been coming along?”

“Fine, thanks for asking,” Toby snapped. In that moment, he wanted nothing more than to have these people gone, out of his apartment, out of his life, so he could go gamble in peace.

“Would you like to go to a meeting with us?” Marcus asked. It was perhaps the third time he’d ever addressed Toby directly since the two had met five months earlier.

Toby opened his mouth to say _No, no I don't want to come to a meeting with you, I never want to go to another meeting again for as long as I live, so fuck off, thank you very much_. But then Heather lifted her hand to tuck a lock of hair behind her ear, and the movement drew Toby’s eyes over to her head, and he glanced above her head, behind her, at the bookshelf full of Happy’s books.

He thought of Happy, who was probably off somewhere angry and miserable, maybe hammering a strip of metal into oblivion, maybe wrapping her car around another tree, all because of him. And somehow that glance to the bookshelves broke the hold his addiction had had over him for the past twelve hours, broke the cycle of hating and isolating himself that had fueled every relapse he’d ever had since he first tried to quit gambling halfway through medical school. That glance gave him just enough willpower to mutter, “Okay.”

Surprise took over every face in his view, soon replaced by excitement. His fellow addicts all rushed to help him get up; Elijah went with him into the bathroom to make sure he didn’t jump out the window while he was supposed to be washing his face. When they returned to the living room, Christine had pulled a granola bar out of her purse and offered it to him to help him sober up. Toby was about to say that alcohol-metabolization didn’t work like that, but he held his tongue.

And then they all left his apartment in a line, inexplicably reminding Toby of the way the dwarves walked to work in the Snow White movie he’d watched as a kid.

Toby drove with Christine. By the time they got in her car, the dashboard clock read 11:12. There was a noon meeting on Pasadena, forty-five minutes away if traffic was agreeable.

The pair, an odd couple of sponsor and sponsee, didn’t speak on the drive. Christine hummed silently for the first few minutes, as if this car ride was as mundane as a trip to the grocery store, but stopped once they got on the highway. In the silence, Toby thought of Happy’s books, of the annoyed look she got when reading, as if she were angry that the fictional characters refused to act in whatever way she thought they should.

The last book he had read that wouldn’t be found in the reference section of a library was _Moby Dick_ , which had rounded out the nineteenth-century literature class he’d been forced to take in college to complete his English gen-ed requirement. He had always firmly held the view that his life was interesting enough to make the excitement of fiction unnecessary. And, with three millions-of-lives-on-the-line type missions’ having passed through the Scorpion garage in the past month, he still thought that that philosophy wasn’t exactly flawed. But, for some reason, Happy’s bookshelf had seemed exceptionally appealing to him that morning.

When he got home, after calling Happy and leaving her an apology message, he would run his fingers over the worn spines of her books. He’d stand in front of the masses of paper for ten minutes before finally picking up a novel about British spies, making sure to note where it was on the shelf so as to be able to put it back in the right place. He’d sit down and start reading it, immediately getting captivated by a story that allowed him to forget how much he’d screwed up in the last twenty-four hours. He’d flip page after page, continuing through the afternoon and into the evening, until his eyelids grew heavy and he was sucked into sleep.

But, for now, he just sat in Christine’s car and stared out at the horizon.


	48. Chapter 48

When Happy had finished crying in Paige’s bathroom, Paige led her onto the sofa and then went into the kitchen, reappearing a minute later with a gallon of ice cream and two spoons.

“What is this, a girls’ night in?” Happy asked, but there was no malice in her voice.

“Come on. It’s comfort food. You know it’d made you feel better.”

Happy shrugged and opened the top of the carton.

“Talk to me, Happy,” Paige said. “Your mind has to be reeling right now.”

Happy was too emotionally worn-down to spit back a sarcastic response. Instead, she tried telling the truth.

“I’m just so angry with him. You haven’t heard from him, have you? He hasn’t even called around to see if anyone knows where I am. For all he knows, I got hit by a car on my way out of the apartment this morning, and he doesn’t even care.”

“Not to defend him, but I texted him to tell him you were over here. So he knows you’re not dead, if that’s any consolation.”

“Well, I’m still mad.”

“You have a right to be mad.”

“I mean, I love Toby. I want to marry him. I want to start a family with him.” The words felt foreign on Happy’s lips. “But am I going to have to live the rest of my life wondering when he’s going to relapse again? When he’s going to not come home and I’ll stay up all night calling hospitals, thinking he’s been in some sort of terrible accident? When he’s going to blow our savings, our kids’ college funds, on some bender?”

Paige nodded along and patted Happy’s knee.

“And, oh, God,” Happy continued, “I _live_ with him. I can’t go back home and stay there. I just can’t do it.”

“Why don’t you stay here for a while? You’re welcome as long as you like.”

Happy sighed. “Thanks, Paige, but I don’t think that’s the best idea. Knowing that you’d be going to work and seeing him… I just think I need to be a little further removed from the situation right now.”

Paige’s response was interrupted by her phone’s ringing; she slipped it out of her pocket and answered the call.

“Hello?” She paused “Oh, hi. Yes, she’s here. One second.” She held the phone out to Happy. “It’s your dad.”

Happy accepted the phone, surprised. “Dad?”

“Hey, Happy.”

“How’d you know I was over here?”

“Well, when you didn’t show up--”

Happy bent her head down to rest in her free hand. “Oh, shoot. We were supposed to hang out today. I totally forgot.”

“Don’t worry about it. I called you, but your phone when straight to voicemail, so I called your house and Toby told me you were with Paige.”

“You talked to Toby?” Happy’s voice shook.

“Yeah.”

“How did he sound?”

“Fine. Maybe a little drunk, but, hey, I’m not here to judge. Why? Is something wrong?”

“I…” Despite everything, Happy didn’t want to tell Patrick what had happened. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing his doubts about Toby had been justified. “It’s just been a long day.”

“I hate to break it to you, Happy, but it’s barely noon.”

Happy chuckled softly. “Yeah. Hey, Dad?”

“What’s up?”

She took a deep breath, steadying herself before asking the question. “Do you think I could come stay with you for a while?”

* * *

 When Toby awoke, disoriented, it was ten at night and he had a head-pounding hangover. Happy’s book was laying face-down on his chest. He closed it and tossed it onto the coffee table, where it nearly collided with his bowl of sobriety chips. He turned his eyes away, not wanting to look at the bowl, to be reminded to what he did.

He started sitting up; as he was doing so, their front door creaked open. He turned to see who it was.

“Happy,” he breathed. Despite Paige’s text telling him where Happy was, he was still relieved to see her -- to know she hadn’t jumped in the car and run off to some other state, never to return.

“Hey,” she said, soft enough that he couldn’t hear the tone of her voice. Her body language said enough, though: she was pissed.

“Hap, I--”

She cut him off. “I’m just here to grab some stuff.” She started walking through the living room and into the hallway. “I’m going to stay at my dad’s house.”

“Oh? For how long?”

He probably shouldn’t have asked that question; he could tell she needed space, needed him not to pry. But he was too tired and hungover and guilty to help himself.

“I don’t know.” She slipped into their bedroom and shut the door behind her.

Toby sat on the couch, listening to the shuffling of clothes from the other room, until Happy reemerged, duffel bag in hand. She walked past him wordlessly and started walking out of the apartment.

“Happy, wait…”

She turned and looked him, rage on her face. “You know, when I remember all the times I’ve almost died for Scorpion, do you know what I think?” Her voice was loud, almost a yell. “I think, ‘If I were to die, Toby would relapse, and that would ruin his life. I have to stay alive for Toby.’ But I’m alive and look where we are.”

Toby looked down at the floor, ashamed.

Happy took an angry breath. “Like I said, I’m going to Patrick’s place. Please don’t call.” With that, she walked out of the front door and was gone.


	49. Chapter 49

After Happy left, Toby spent a sleepless night on the sofa, unwilling to go into their bedroom and lie alone in a queen-sized bed. A knock on the door got him off the couch at seven in the morning. When he went over to open it, he found Phil standing in the hallway.

“Toby,” Phil said, breathless and excited.

“What are you doing here, man? Are you alright?” When Toby had left the poker game, Phil was thirty thousand dollars that he did not have in the hole; Toby hadn’t expected him to make it out of their without at least a hospital-stay-worthy beating.

“I’m fine. But guess what?”

“What?”

“I got a buddy -- well, he’s friend of a friend, kind of, whatever -- who has a hookup for this game in South Pasadena. It starts at noon. I was figuring we could shower, regroup, and then--”

Phil was cut off by Toby’s swift punch to his jaw. Phil stumbled backward, putting a hand to his mouth and moaning.

“ _Toby_. What the hell?”

Toby reached out and grabbed Phil’s shirt, pulling him an in away from his chest.

“Listen.” Tiny flecks of Toby’s spit landed on Phil’s cheeks as he talked. “I hate you right now. Honest to God, I _hate_ you. I wish we had never met, okay? I get that it’s not your fault that I relapsed and I should have been stronger or whatever, but _you’re_ the one who suggested that Goddamned poker game, and I _hate_ you for that. I want nothing more than to beat the hell out of you. But I’m not going to do that, because for some reason I’m feeling nice enough to try to help you, okay? So I’m going to call your sponsor and I’m going to tell him what happened, and maybe he might know what to do. But, before I do that, you’re going to get the fuck out of my apartment building, okay? And if you _ever_ come to me to talk about gambling again -- you know what, screw it. If you ever try to talk to me again _at all_ , I don’t think I’m going to be so nice. Okay?”

Phil nodded meekly, still cupping his jaw. His lower lip was split and blood was starting to seep out of the cut; Toby felt an odd sense of accomplishment at the sight of it.

Toby shoved Phil backwards, into the hallway, and slammed the door.

* * *

When Paige got to the garage that morning, Walter, Sylvester, and Cabe were there, but Toby was absent.

“Hey, guys?” she said, and all three men looked at her. “I have some… bad news.”

“What happened?” Sylvester asked, his mind already racing to worst possible scenarios.

“The day before yesterday, Toby went gambling.”

Paige hadn’t really known what to expect when she told everyone, but she was still surprised at the lack of reactions. Sylvester said a quiet, “Oh,”; Cabe nodded somberly before taking a sip of coffee; Walter didn’t seem to react at all.

“He and Happy fought about it,” Paige continued after a minute, “which was to be expected, I guess. Happy’s staying with her dad for a little while. She wants to take some time off; she said she didn’t want anyone to call her.”

“I’d expect her to tell me if she wanted to take time off,” Walter said, “rather than using a messenger. But if that’s what she wants.”

With that, everyone turned back to their work.

“Walter,” Paige said. “A word?”

Walter shrugged and followed Paige into the kitchen.

“Really? ‘I wish Happy had told me herself.’ That’s your reaction to what I just told you?”

“Well, we’re not in high school. I don’t enjoy she-told-me-to-tell-you interactions.”

“That’s not my point. Toby _relapsed_. Do you even care?”

Walter looked away from her. “Of course I care.”

“Really? Because it doesn’t seem like it, from where I’m standing.”

“Look, Paige, Toby has been gambling since long before any of us knew him. A few years before you joined the team, it wasn’t uncommon for him to disappear for days at a time and then turn back up in a hospital, beaten half to death. Of course I don’t like it when he does this to himself -- he loses money and he gets hurt -- but, after all this time, I’ve kind of learned that I can’t worry about him too much. It’s not worth the energy. He’s going to do what he’s going to do; I can’t change that.”

Paige raised her eyebrows. “Wow. That’s actually a pretty mature, well-adjusted thing to say.”

Walter smiled slightly. “I do try.”

* * *

Once Toby had checked out his hand -- it would bruise, but nothing was broken -- and left Phil’s sponsor a curt message, he got to work cleaning the apartment. He swept up the broken glass from the hallway and the cracked pieces of his mug from the kitchen; he picked up the trashed wooden picture frames; he got a washcloth and worked on the dried bloodstains on the floor, erasing the little brown spots that marked where Happy’s rage had taken her. Once that was finished, he brought his bowl of sobriety chips into the kitchen and tipped them into the trash. Then he left for work.

* * *

 When Toby got to the garage, the entire team, save for Happy, was working at their desks. No one looked particularly angry that Walter had called them in on a Sunday. One glance around the room told Toby that everyone knew about his relapse but that no one would mention it. He walked quietly over to his desk, not bothering to say hello to anyone.

“Well,” Walter said, “now that we’re all hear, the reason--”

“Happy’s not here,” Toby interrupted. The rest of the team looked around at each other. Paige was the one who spoke.

“Happy decided to take some time off. She told us not to call her.”

Toby looked over at Paige but didn’t speak. He saw only pity on her face.

“As I was saying,” Walter continued, “the reason I called you all in today was because we got a call about a case upstate. A company in Oakland…”

Toby zoned out; he leaned back in his chair and tried not to think of Happy.


	50. Chapter 50

By the time the team got back to the garage from their meeting with Cooper, it was nearly eight at night. Everyone quickly dispersed: Paige went to pick Ralph up from Sloan’s house; Cabe left to drive Sylvester home; Walter went upstairs to shower and get to work on some project. Toby was left alone at his desk.

It had been two weeks since his relapse, since everything had fallen apart. He hadn’t heard from Happy since then; Paige might have talked with her but, if she had, she wasn’t telling Toby about it. As far as he knew, Happy was still holed up with her dad, not wanting to speak to anyone affiliated with Scorpion. He’d dialed her number a dozen times, but he always stopped just short of pressing _send_. She needed time to cool off; he just hoped that, once she had, she’d come back to him.

In those past two weeks, his apartment had grown impossibly large and lonely. He avoided going home; he couldn’t stand the silence there. Sometimes -- and he hated himself for it -- he would leave work and head straight to a casino to waste the night away. That was better than being alone at his home, even if it left him ashamed and indebted in the morning.

Paige invited him over occasionally. She saw how lonely he was and wanted to help, he knew, but, after a day at work, he could never bear to sit under her pitying gaze any longer. He didn’t want to spend any extra time with Walter or Sylvester or Cabe, either; they would just awkwardly act as if nothing had happened, as if Happy wasn’t gone and he hadn’t relapsed, and that would wound him even more than pity.

He talked to Christine sometimes. He wasn’t going to meetings -- hadn’t been to one since the one she’d taken him to -- but she still called him every few days. She had this way of talking to him that didn’t make him feel guilty, even though he knew she wished he hadn’t relapsed. It was nice to have a conversation with someone without being perpetually reminded that he’d let them so horribly down. It was nice to have someone who wouldn’t abandon him, not matter how many times he screwed up.

By now, though, Christine would be at the eight o’clock meeting on Charles Street, all but unreachable. That left Toby nothing to do but have his mind wander to the person he let down the most, the person who had left him.

He took out his phone to search for some impossibly-complex medical article to keep his mind busy. As he was searching Google, though, one of his sports apps sent an update: _The Mets score a home run, putting them up 3-1 over the Dodgers in the fifth inning._

It was the game he was supposed to be watching with Patrick. Not that Patrick would be happy to see him if he were to show up. 

* * *

 “Damn!” Patrick yelled from his living room. Happy, who was making a post-dinner snack of toast for herself, looked up from her food.

“What happened?”

“The Mets scored again. They’re up by two runs now.”

Happy walked into the living room and sat down on the sofa next to her father, plate of toast in hand.

“They have four more innings to catch up, though, right?”

“Yeah, but still.”

Happy couldn’t help but think that Toby would be happy; his home team was winning. She wondered if he was watching the game. Or maybe he and everyone else was out on a case. Or maybe he was gambling.

She shook her head. She couldn’t allow herself to get caught up thinking about him -- about his going to work and the store and casinos, acting as if nothing had changed. He wasn’t thinking of her, she was sure; if he were, he’d have called her newly-replaced cell phone and Patrick’s house and Patrick’s shop fifty times over by now. He’d never had self-control when it came to her. She hadn’t heard from him in two weeks; he must have all but forgotten her by now.

She shook her head again. She’d been down this road before; it only led to her crying in the bathroom, trying to be quiet enough to Patrick wouldn’t hear.

“The Johnsons called while you were in the shower,” she said, to distract herself. “They want to know when the Subaru would be done.”

“What’d you tell them?”

“We’d have it done by Friday. I’m just waiting on the part from that shop out in Glendale; once it comes, it’ll be a quick fix.”

Patrick smiled. “That’s my girl. You’re a natural, you know that?”

Happy held back a sharp-tongued, _Well, my IQ is north of 170, so this work really isn’t that hard for me_. She knew father didn’t mean to belittle her talent, but he didn’t always seem to recognize the fact that fixing midsize sedans was well below her pay grade.

Patrick turned his attention back to the game on the TV; he wasn’t interested in talking shop right now. Happy had spent years willfully not learning anything about sports -- they tempted Toby to gamble and no one else on the team liked them -- but she was desperate.

“So, Dad, I’ve never really known anything about baseball. Could you explain it to me?”

“Oh, of course! So the object of the game is to the get the most runs.” With that, Patrick was off into an excited, detailed explanation of America’s pastime. Happy only had to half-listen to get what he was saying, but she tried hard to focus, to keep her mind from wandering to other things. Eventually, she found herself getting into the game; she rooted for her father’s team -- who made a comeback in the seventh inning -- and, childishly, almost hoped Toby was watching his home team lose.


	51. Chapter 51

On the Saturday that marked three weeks since Toby’s relapse, Happy called Paige. It was the first contact she’d had with anyone from the team since she’d gone to stay with her dad. They only talked for a few minutes -- Paige had to rush off to pick up Ralph -- but they set up a lunch date for the following day.

* * *

When Happy walked into the cafe, she saw Paige almost immediately. Her bright smile looked foreign to Happy; it seemed like years since she had seen anyone from Scorpion.

“How are you?” Paige asked, standing up to give Happy a hug

“Hanging in there.”

“It’s good to see you.”

“You, too. It’s been a long time.”

Paige nodded. “How’s life at your dad’s treating you?”

“Pretty good. I’ve been helping out with some car repairs. It’s pretty mindless, but it keeps me busy.”

“Well, car repairs don’t compare to working for Homeland, I guess, but they’re still important. I’m glad you have something to do. And how’s Patrick?”

“Fine. He’s enjoying having some company, I think. He’s lived alone for the past thirty-some years, so.”

“I bet it’s nice for him to have you around.”

An awkward silence fell over the table, so Happy asked, “How’s the team?”

“Fine. We’ve been pretty busy lately -- mostly mundane stuff, though. Security system reboots, consulting on public-work projects, that sort of thing. Nothing too exciting.”

“Sylvester and Walter, are they doing okay?”

“They’re doing fine. And Cabe’s good, too; he just signed up for another art class. This one’s about sculpting, I think. He seemed pretty excited about it.”

Neither woman mentioned the last team member, the one who was on both of their minds.

“I’m glad everyone’s doing well. I was a little worried you guys would fall apart without me.”

Paige laughed. “Well, we are definitely missing our star mechanic; Toby’s been trying to fill in -- he claims he’s watched you enough to learn a few things -- but he really has no idea what he’s doing.”

“Hm,” was all Happy said.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to bring him up…”

“It’s fine,” Happy said curtly.

“Is it really?” Paige asked quietly.

Happy shrugged. “God, I’m just still so angry at him.”

“I imagine I’d be, too, in your situation.”

“It’s not even just what he did. I mean, I’m mad at him for gambling, of course, but how he handled himself afterwards gets me. You know he hasn’t even tried to contact me in three weeks? No apology letters, no messages, nothing.”

“You told him not to call.”

“So? When has he ever listened to my stupid rules before?” Happy knew she was sounding irrational, but she didn’t care. “He’s a Harvard-trained psychiatrist, as he likes to remind us all the time. He should know how to make me feel better. I just want to stop feeling like _this_.” She motioned vaguely to herself.

“Oh, you poor thing.” Paige reached out across the table and squeezed her hand.

“It’s like he doesn’t even care about me anymore.”

“Okay, I have to stop you there. Happy, whatever has happened in the past month, Toby still loves you. You should see the way he mopes around the garage, looking over at your desk wistfully. I don’t mean to try to guilt you into talking with him; if you still want your space, that is definitely your right. But don’t stay away because you think he doesn’t care. It’s obvious he misses you like crazy.”

“Really?”

“Of course. I know he wants more than anything to talk to you.”

Happy, for the first time in two weeks, allowed herself to think of Toby -- not of him gambling, but of him sitting at home, alone, waiting for her to come back. Suddenly, she felt very, very guilty.

“I have to go,” she said, standing up quickly. “I have to talk to him.”

* * *

When Happy pulled into the parking lot of her building, she was hit with an odd sense of nostalgia. Everything was so familiar -- the potholes in the asphalt, the faded white lines marking each spot. It felt like home.

As she parked the car, she saw Toby walking out of the building. She started to roll down the window to call out to him, but something about the way he was moving -- his head low, his shoulders sagging -- stopped her. Deep down, her anger was enjoying this: seeing what her leaving had done to him, watching him suffer the way she had.

Happy sunk low in her seat to hide from his view, but Toby didn’t look over at her. He got into his car, shut the door, and leaned his head forward, onto the steering wheel. His posture screamed exhaustion and shame; Happy found her anger fading quickly into pity.

Then, he pulled something out of his pocket. It had been over a year since Happy had seen a piece of paper like that, but she recognized it instantly: a betting slip. He was headed to the racetrack.

He started his car and pulled out of the apartment building’s parking lot, still not recognizing Happy’s truck. When he had turned the corner and was out of sight, Happy banged fists on the steering wheel. The car horn let out a single, short beep in response.

She was going to forgive him. She was going to go in there and apologize -- _apologize_ \-- for leaving and tell him that she had forgiven him for what he had done. On the way over, she had even started a grand, Toby-esque speech in her head. And while she was doing that, he was getting ready to go to the racetrack.

She pulled out of the parking lot, grinding her teeth with rage. She wanted to be gone, away from Toby, to never see him again. She got to the entrance to I-10, which would take her west, back to her dad’s apartment. But, at that moment, Patrick’s place didn’t seem far enough away. She kept going, past I-10, onto I-5 _._ She turned onto the entrance ramp, relishing the feeling of the truck’s engine humming under her as she got up to highway speed. She drove under a big, green sign reading _I-5 North to San Jose, Sacramento_ , smiling as she read it. Her truck, going eighty miles an hour, took her away from LA, away from the Suburu she had just finished fixing and Paige at the coffee shop and her boyfriend at the racetrack, towards something else.


	52. Chapter 52

After Happy had left to talk to Toby, Paige took her time finishing her food. When she was done eating, she left and drove over to her favorite park, a few blocks from the garage. Ralph was spending the day at the aquarium with Sloan, so she had a rare day off from both work and mothering.

She spent the afternoon walking in the park, remembering her life before Scorpion, before Ralph. Back when she was in college, she used to love taking walks. Her sorority sisters like to make fun of her for it -- _what are you, a grandma?_ \-- but the solitude was always calming for her, always gave her time to think. Back then, she’d had dreams of being something crazy -- a singer or a lawyer or an astrophysicist. Not that she had ever enjoyed math, but she just liked having the options in front of her.

Now, though, she had ended up a single mother, surrounded by poorly-adjusted geniuses and an aging Homeland worker. And she wouldn’t change any of it.

The park was pretty empty for a Saturday afternoon; she enjoyed the quiet. Around the time she started getting hungry, she got back in her car and started over to Kovalsky’s to pick up something for dinner. As she was driving, feeling pretty good about her efforts to reconnect Toby and Happy, she dialed Toby’s number. She didn’t want to interrupted any making-up they might be doing, but they’d had four or five hours to themselves by now, so she figured it would be okay to call.

Toby didn’t pick up at first, and she started wondering if she would have to leave a message -- perhaps their making up had taken longer than she’d expected -- when Toby came over the line.

“Paige?” His voice was loud, almost a yell; there was a lot of background noise.

“Toby? Where are you?”

Toby hesitated before saying, “At off-track betting.”

“ _What_?”

“Jeez, don’t act so surprised.”

“Didn’t Happy come talk to you?”

“What? No. I haven’t heard from her for three weeks. Why?”

“I just thought… Nevermind. Call me when you get home safe, okay?”

“Yeah.” With that, he hung up.

Paige stopped at a red light and leaned her head back on the headrest in defeat. Obviously her efforts to reconnect Toby and Happy hadn’t been as successful as she’d thought.

* * *

Paige didn’t hear from Toby again until late that night, after Sloan’s mom had returned Ralph and he’d gone to bed. It was nearly midnight when Paige, yawning on her sofa while watching the news, got a text saying, _Doubt you’re still up, but I’m home now._  She called Toby immediately.

“I thought that off-track betting place closed at eight,” she said as soon as he picked up.

“It does. I went out with some guys afterwards.”

Paige didn’t press for a more specific description of “went out”. “I’m glad you got home alright. You know I worry about you when you go to those places.”

“The off-track betting is actually a pretty stand-up place, compared to some of the other spots in town. But thanks, I guess. Hey, what was that about Happy’s calling me?”

Paige hesitated before saying, “I saw her this morning.”

“You did?” Poorly-masked desperation crept into Toby’s voice. “How did she seem? Did she look okay?”

“She seemed fine. Not super cheery, but you know, it’s Happy.”

“And she said she was going to call me?”

“Well, she _said_ she was going to go find you and talk to you.”

“Whoa.”

“But she didn’t?”

“I mean, she might have showed up after I had left, but I definitely didn’t see her. God, I’m so stupid. She wanted to talk to me and I wasn’t there.”

“You didn’t know. I should’ve called to tell you. I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s not your fault. God. Maybe I should go over to Patrick’s place and try to talk with her?”

“I don’t know, you don’t want to overwhelm her. Maybe just call her.”

“I’ll do that. Thanks, Paige.”

“Sure thing. And Toby?”

“Yeah?”

“Really, stay safe. We all worry about you.”

Toby sighed. “Thanks, Paige.” Then he hung up.

Paige considered driving over to his apartment, just to give him some company; she’d hated hearing the guilt take over his voice when he realized he’d wasted an opportunity to make up with Happy by going gambling. But it was late, and Ralph might wake up to hear her leave and get worried. She settled for texting him a good-luck message and going to bed.


	53. Chapter 53

Happy blasted past San Jose, Sacramento, and a sign saying _Oregon Welcomes You!_. She didn’t stop until the sun was well behind the horizon and her eyelids were growing heavy. She finally pulled off the highway in Brookings, a tiny coastal town she’d never heard of until a sign came up for it. She stopped at the first place she found: a ratty motel where they didn’t ask for any ID as she checked in and rooms were fifty dollars a night.

Her room was only a hair bigger than their closet at home and she didn’t even want to think about what kind of stains were hiding in the dark-purple fabric of the bedspread, but it was quiet and there was no chance anyone from the team would come looking for her there. She hadn’t packed anything for her impromptu trip, so she only had to bring her satchel in from her truck. When she got in her room, she collapsed on the bed and went to sleep.

* * *

Toby waited until the morning after talking to Paige to make the call. He spent a restless night thinking of what to say, occasionally dozing off and dreaming of Happy’s coming back to him, only to wake up an hour later, terribly disappointed that it hadn’t been real. He finally got out of bed at five in the morning, much too early to call Happy; when she didn’t have to wake up for a case, she could easily sleep until noon. He tried -- and failed -- to distract himself with the most recent issue of the _American Journal of Psychiatry,_ which had come in the mail a few days before. Finally, at ten, he couldn’t contain himself any longer and dialed Happy’s number.

It went straight to voicemail. Not the ideal outcome, but at least she hadn’t screened his call and hung up on him. Or worse -- but also, he thought, more likely -- picked up just long enough to tell him to go to hell and never speak to her again.

He listened to her curt voicemail recording -- _This is Happy Quinn. Leave a message._ \-- and the robotic beep signaling he could start talking. Suddenly, all seventeen versions of the apology speech he’d come up with in bed were forgotten. It took him a minute to stumble out any words at all.

“Happy. Hi, it’s me. Toby. It’s Toby. You know, Toby -- of course you know who I am. God, sorry. I don’t know if you want to hear from me. You might just delete this message without even listening to it. I’d understand if you did that. I was trying really hard to give you your space, like you wanted. God, I don’t even know how many times I’ve almost called you in the past few weeks. But after everything that happened -- after everything I did -- I wanted so badly to not be pushy. The only reason I’m calling now is that Paige told me she talked to you and… and that maybe you’d be… you’d be interested in talking to me. If you are… God, Hap, I’d really like to talk to you. If you don’t want to, I’ll respect that. I won’t call again. But if you want to call me, I’m around. Everyone misses you. God, you should’ve seen me trying to rig up a lift for this project we were doing the other day… Cabe was laughing his ass off, and Walter was getting so mad. He had that face-- I’m sorry. I’m just rambling now. Anyway, we all miss you, and I’d really like to hear from you. I love you, Happy. Goodbye.”

When he hung up, the click that ended the call seemed to echo in his empty apartment. He wanted to be out of there; he knew some guys who were throwing together a poker game at noon, and he considered going. But, with his proclamation of love fresh in his ears, he found that he didn’t really want to go. So he stayed; he watched TV, read his psychiatric journal, even called some cousins -- who were more than surprised to hear from him -- and asked after nieces and nephews. He did a lot of meaningless stuff, but he did not gamble.

* * *

When Happy woke up the next morning, she went to the closest store -- a Walmart -- and picked up a few clothes, a toothbrush, and a phone charger. (Her phone had died around Sacramento, halfway through her jamming out to “Highway to Hell” through her car’s Bluetooth.) Then she found a diner with a nice view of the ocean and ate a small plate of scrambled eggs.

As she was eating, she plugged in her phone and texted her dad saying she would be out of town for a while. There was a barrage of other texts and voicemails, but she didn’t even bothering looking at who they were from; probably just Paige, maybe a few customers of Patrick’s. On a whim, she unplugged her phone and fiddled around with some battery-draining apps until it died again. She immediately felt blissfully unconnected, alone, peaceful, for the first time in weeks.

* * *

Around five, Toby went to his fridge to look for something to cook for dinner, but he found it nearly completely empty, save for a couple bottles of beer and some expired milk, so he headed to the store.

It had been a while since he went grocery shopping -- Happy enjoyed doing it, so she normally took care of it -- and the dirty, white tiles and bright fluorescent lights of the local Vons were startling at first. Soon, though, he fell into the familiar rhythm of walking down the aisle and loading his cart with food.

As he was reaching for a package of pork chops in the meat fridge, someone backed into him. He turned around, forgiving smile already on his lips, when he saw a familiar face.

“Whoops, sorry, I didn’t--” the man started to say, before recognizing him. “Toby?”

“Hi, Patrick.”

Patrick’s posture immediately became defensive; he took a step back and folded his arms. “Oh. I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“Yeah, well. It’s, um… How are you?”

“Fine. It’s hard to see my daughter hurting, though.”

Toby tried a joke: “Straight for the jugular, huh?” Patrick didn’t laugh. “Well, uh, how’s Happy?”

“If she wanted you to know, she’d have called you herself.” Behind the malice of Patrick’s words was a hint of sadness, uncertainty; Toby latched onto it.

“Is she still staying with you?”

Patrick glanced towards the ground, avoiding eye contact, but he didn’t respond.

“She’s not?” Toby guessed.

“I don’t think she’d want me to be talking to you.”

“Where is she? She’s not hurt, is she?”

“No, she’s fine -- as far as I know. She just told me she’d be out of town for a bit.”

“Out of town where?”

“I don’t know; she would’ve--”

“She would’ve told me if she wanted me to know, I got it,” Toby interrupted. “But, come on, Patrick. I at least want to know that she’s safe.”

Patrick sighed, giving up on pushing against the interrogation. “I really don’t know, Toby. She didn’t come home last night, and this morning all I got was a text saying she would be gone for a while. I don’t know where she is or when she’s coming back.”

“So you saw her yesterday morning?”

“Yeah. She left for a lunch with Paige and then I didn’t see her again. Now, if you’ll excuse me.” He motioned to his cart, which was half-full. Toby nodded a good-bye, his mind racing.

Happy didn’t come home after having lunch with Paige. She left their lunch to come talk to him and no one had seen her since. A few things might have spooked her enough not to go through with meeting him, but he could only think of one thing that would’ve made her leave town: she saw him going to gamble.

He’d finally done it. He’d driven her away. Maybe -- he didn’t even want to think it -- forever.


	54. Chapter 54

Toby left his half-filled shopping cart in the meat aisle of the grocery store and rushed home. His mind was racing; he couldn’t focus on anything but the desire to find Happy. He went home and rushed up to his apartment, ready to grab a few things and hit the road, but Paige was standing in his hallway, holding a casserole dish.

“What are you doing here?” he asked by way of greeting. 

“Oh, hi, Toby!” Paige said cheerily. “I just came by to see how things were going, and to drop this off.” She lifted up the casserole dish slightly. “Were you just coming home?”

“Yeah, but I have to go back out. Now’s not really a good time.”

Paige frowned at him; Toby could tell she thought he was going to go gambling. It wasn’t a bad guess, considering where he’d been spending most of his time since Happy left, but it made Toby angry.

“I’m not going to a casino,” he snapped, even though she hadn’t said anything.

“Then what are you doing?”

“I’m going to find Happy.”

“ ‘Find’ her? Isn’t she at Patrick’s?”

“No, I just ran into him. He hasn’t seen her since yesterday. He doesn’t know where she is.”

Paige hesitated, her mouth forming a little “O”. Toby pushed passed her, unlocking his front door and walking into his apartment.

“Well, do  _ you _ know where she is?” she said finally.

“No,” he admitted, grabbing his satchel and mindlessly throwing useless stuff into it -- a package of bandaids, some mints, an envelope that had come in the mail the day before. “But I can trace her cell phone. Or track her credit-card purchases. Something.”

“Toby, do you hear yourself right now? You sound like the kind of crazy ex-boyfriend who kills people.” 

“I’m not planning on murdering anyone, but I’m not too far from going crazy.” He sighed. “Paige, I have to talk to her.”

“Stop. Hold on a minute.” Paige put the casserole dish down on the coffee table and grabbed the satchel out of Toby’s hand. “Take a breath. No one’s dying, okay? Let’s think this through.”

“Paige, I’m worried she’s gone forever. If I don’t find her soon... What if she never comes back?”

Paige put the satchel down and wrapped an arm around Toby. 

“She’s going to come back, Toby. This isn’t the same Happy from three years ago. Since I’ve met her, she’s changed -- she’s not just going to disappear.”

“You don't know that.”

“Yes, I do. Now, there might be a lot of making-up to do -- you may have to get on your knees and beg just to get her to come back to work, Toby. But Happy’s not gone.”

Tears were welling in Toby’s eyes. “You think so?”

“I’m sure. At the very least, this isn’t the last we’ve seen on Happy Quinn.”

“So, what? I just sit here and do nothing?”

“I didn’t say that. Here’s what we’re going to do: I’m going to call Happy and tell her you want to talk to her and see what she says. She may want to talk to you, too.” 

“I doubt that.”

“You never know. If she says she wants to see you, great. If she says she needs space, we give her space.”

“What if she ignores your call?”

“I’ll leave a message. And if she doesn’t respond within a day, then we can go all Sherlock Holmes. We’ll track her down -- if nothing else, we’ll at least make sure she’s safe. But we’re going to do it together. And we’re going to keep it as far from stalker-ish as we can, okay?”

Toby took a breath. “Okay.”

“Good. Now, first things first, we take care of ourselves. What have you had to eat today?”

It took a minute for Toby to remember. “Some toaster waffles for breakfast this morning. And some popcorn for lunch.” 

“That’s it? Okay, you need to eat.” She picked up the casserole. “This needs to go in the oven at four hundred for an hour. Can you do that?”

Toby nodded. His anger and worry had faded into numbness; he followed Paige’s instructions blindly. He fell into the state-of-mind he was in when someone had to pull him out of a rabbit hole: somewhere, he vaguely realized that what he was doing was good for him, but he couldn’t really process that fact in the moment. 

When he got back from the kitchen, the casserole in the oven, Paige had taken the stuff out of his satchel. 

“What were you going to do?” she asked, holding up the mints in one hand and the envelope in the other. “Bribe her to come back with mints and a phone bill?”

Toby laughed. “I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking.”

“Where would you be without me?” she asked, a smile on her face. “Okay, is the food cooking?”

“Yep.”

“Good. Now, while that cooks: when’s the last time you showered?”

“Um, I’m not sure…” 

“Okay, that means you need to take one now. You’ll feel better afterwards.” 

Toby nodded and then went into the bathroom. As he was getting undressed, he heard little beeps which told him Paige was dialing a number on her phone but, when he turned the shower on, all noise from the living room was drowned out by the rushing water.

He took his time in the shower, allowing the almost-too-hot water to run down his back and chest. The feeling of being immersed in heat -- the scalding water, the humid steam -- comforted him. He stayed there until the water had turned lukewarm and his whole body was red. 

When he came out of the shower, dressed in clean clothes for the first time in days, Paige was on the sofa, reading from one of his science magazines.

“Learn anything good?” he asked. 

She furrowed her eyebrows and began speaking slowly, stumbling over every third word. “ ‘Patients with opioid dependence are more likely to transition to extended-release naltrexone if, during detoxification, they receive rapidly increasing doses of oral naltrexone than if they receive the standard fifteen-day regimen including a seven-day buprenorphine taper.’ ” She looked up at him. “Does that mean anything to you?”

“Actually, it does. It’s pretty big news in the world of treating narcotic addictions. Not sure why you would care, though.”

Paige set the magazine down. “Well, it was on the coffee table, and it had this cute picture of a baby on the cover, so I thought I’d try it out. Won’t be making that mistake again.”

Toby sat down beside her on the sofa. “So… Did you call Happy?”

“I did. She didn’t respond, so I left her a message.” 

Toby sighed. “So that means…”

“We wait a day and see if she calls back.”

Toby leaned his head back on the sofa and groaned. “I hate waiting.”

“Yeah, patience has never been your thing.”

They were silent for a moment before Paige said, “Okay, Toby, I should really go get dinner for Ralph now. Are you going to be okay here by yourself? You could come over, if you want.”

The thought of Ralph seeing him like this -- so sad and broken -- made Toby shudder. “No, I’ll be fine. I’ve got my casserole and my oral-naltrexone article, so.”

“Okay. Well, call me if you need anything. Really.”

“Thanks, Paige. For everything.”

Paige smiled and then got up to go, and Toby found himself, yet again, alone in his apartment. 


	55. Chapter 55

After she left the diner where she had breakfast, Happy spent the afternoon driving around Brookings, trying to get her bearings. It was nice, finally getting to drive without being stuck in endless traffic. She weaved her way around the winding, beach-front roads for hours. She didn’t stop until dinner time, when her gas light turned on.

There was a gas station -- the only one in town, as far as she could tell -- a block and half from the motel; it was deserted when she got there. She filled her tank and then went inside to pay. It was thirty-nine dollars, plus tax. She was running low on cash; she’d only had a little over a hundred dollars on her to begin with, and she’d spent fifty on the room and twelve on breakfast. 

She had a credit card and an ATM card with her, but she didn’t want to use either. She didn’t know how long she’d stay in Brookings, and she didn’t think anyone from the team would try to come find her but, if they were going to try, she wasn’t going to make it easy for them. She’d taken the battery out of her phone, and she didn’t want any bank statements pointing people towards Oregon. 

As she handed the cashier two twenties, leaving only thirteen dollars and change in her wallet, someone came in from the mechanic shop attached to the gas station came in. 

“Jerry,” the mechanic said to the cashier. “I’m telling you, this engine is busted. I’ve tried everything; it won’t stop smoking.”

“Barry, you’ve had this thing for two days; we have to tell the Klines something.”

“Have you checked the coolant?” Happy asked without thinking.

Jerry looked at her, eyebrows raised. “No. Why?”

“If your engine is overheating, nine time out of ten it’s that the coolant needs to be replaced.”

“Oh? And how would you know?”

“I’m a mechanical engineer. I could fix that car in my sleep.”

Jerry scoffed. “Everything thinks they can do my job better than me, huh?”

“Look, man, if someone brings a car with a smoking engine to you and you don’t even think to check the coolant, you have a bigger problem than nosy customers.” 

With that, Happy turned around and walked out of the store. 

* * *

When Happy got back to the motel, the woman at the front desk was talking to a janitor.

“You really can’t fix it?”

“No, you’re going to need to call an electrician.”

“Jeez, really? You know what they charge over at that place down the street.”

The janitor shrugged. 

Before she could think about it, Happy asked, “What’s the problem?”

Both people looked over at her. “Wiring to the breaker’s messed up,” the janitor said. “Electricity’s out in half the building.”

“I could take a look.”

“Are you an electrician?” The woman asked.

“A mechanical engineer, actually.” 

“Well, if you want to,” the janitor said, “be my guest. The breaker’s in the basement.”

“John can show you,” the woman said with a smile.

John led Happy into a dark, musty-smelling basement. The breaker down there looked at least fifty years old; the wires around it were tangled and messy, not even close to up to code.

“There she is,” John said.

Happy looked around for a minute before realizing the problem: a blown fuse.

“This is actually a pretty quick fix. I probably have the stuff I need in the back of my truck. I’ll go get it.” She turned towards the stairs they’d come down on.

“I’m not going to wait,” John called after her. 

* * *

Once Happy finished replacing the fuse, the lights in the basement flickered to life. She heard a muffled shout of joy above her. When she got upstairs, the woman from the front desk beamed at her.

“Thank you so much. You have no idea how much of a lifesaver you are. Were you going to stay in town for a little while? I’d love to give you a complimentary night in your room.”

Happy shrugged. “Sure.” Not like she had anywhere better to be. 

* * *

The next morning, Happy went back to the same diner. It had a nice view of the ocean, and the upholstery on the booths reminded her of Kovalsky’s -- reminded her of home.

As she was eating, Barry from the gas station came in. He ordered eggs and bacon to go, and then hung around by the front door. It took him a minute to see her; when he did, he came over. 

“Hey, you were in the shop yesterday, weren’t you?” 

“Mm-hm.”

“Jerry ended up replacing the coolant in that van; worked like a charm.” 

“Happy to help.”

He held out his hand. “Barry White.”

Happy shook it. “Happy Quinn.” She realized a moment too late that she should’ve considered giving him a fake name.

“Well, Happy, are you in town for a while? Don’t know if you’re looking for work, but we could definitely use someone with your skills at the shop.”

Happy rolled her eyes. “I’d rather not work at a gas station.”

“Then just in the body shop. And just part time, if you’d rather. I don’t know what the going rate is for mechanical engineers, and I probably can’t match it, but I could pay you fifteen bucks an hour. Between you and me, Jerry really doesn’t know what he's doing; our best mechanic left us a few weeks ago, and we’re really in the lurch. If you could just consult on some cars…”

The word “consult” reminded Happy of her other job, the one she’d abandoned. To keep herself from thinking about it, she said, “Yes.”

“Yes?”

“Okay. I’ll come work for you. A couple days a week. Maybe we could start with Monday and Wednesday and see where we go from there?” 

Barry’s eyes lit up. “That’s great! Can you start tomorrow?”

“Okay. Wait, I have one condition.”

“Name it.”

“You have to pay me in cash.”

Barry looked like he was going to question the request, but instead he just said, “Sure, that won’t be a problem.”


	56. Chapter 56

Happy got to the gas station at nine the next morning. Jerry looked less than pleased to see her, but she could deal with that. Her first job was checking out a yellow Volkswagen that refused to start. It turned out to be a busted solenoid; she told Jerry to order a replacement from the closest auto-parts store, which he did only while grumbling. Then she told him to replace the car’s oil; he looked at her blankly.

“Don’t tell me you don’t know how to change oil,” she said.

“I can probably figure it out. I’ve just never done it before.”

“Jeez, how did you end up as the only mechanic here?” she asked as she went over to the storage closet to get more oil.

“Not that it’s any of your business,” he said when she came back, “but I’m not a mechanic.”

“Wow, could’ve fooled me,” she deadpanned, unscrewing the cap to the oil fill port. “So what are you doing here?”

Jerry shrugged. “My dad owns this place. He wanted all my brothers and I to work here. Larry was the mechanic; Barry worked the gas station and I just did the books. But last month, Larry packed up and left, so.”

“There aren’t any other mechanics around that you could hire?”

“Not until you showed up.”

“Well, why’d Larry leave?”

“Our dad died last month, and then a week later Larry got this idea that he’d wasted his life trying to make Dad happy or whatever, so he decided to go travel in Europe.”

Happy frowned. She’d finished changing the oil, and wiped her hand on a rag. “I’m sorry about your dad. My boyfr-- my ex-- this guy I know, his dad died recently too. It was really hard on him.”

“It’s whatever.”

Happy looked at him. “What kind of names are those for brothers, anyway? Barry, Larry, and Jerry?”

Jerry laughed. “My grandmom’s named was Mary. Dad never had any daughters, so he thought those names would be the best way to honor her.” 

“What would you be doing if you weren’t here, doing the books and screwing up cars?”

“I’ve kind of always wanted to go to medical school. Become a psychiatrist, help people.”

Happy looked at him sharply.

“What?” he asked.

“Oh, nothing. Just… I wouldn’t want to be a doctor. All the psychiatrists I know have heads so big they could barely fit in this room.”

“How many psychiatrists do you know?”

Happy shook her head; she didn’t want to think about that. “Just, let’s move onto the next car, okay?”

Jerry held his hands up defensively. “Sure, fine. Let’s just move on.”

* * *

That same morning, Toby had gotten to work early; he couldn’t contain his excitement about the possibility of hearing back from Happy. When Paige got to the garage, he nearly pounced on her.

“Have you heard anything?” he asked, pulling her into the garage, away from the curious looks from Walter and Sylvester.

“Hello to you too,” Paige said. 

“Sorry, hi.”

“Hi. And no, I haven’t heard from her.” She cut off Toby’s reply. “But remember, I said a day -- twenty-four hours. It was about seven when I called her last night, so we have another ten hours before…”

“We initiate Operation Girlfriend Recon,” Toby finished.

Paige wanted to roll her eyes, but instead she offered a generous laugh. It was nice seeing Toby back to his goofy, joke-making self. 

“Hey, guys?” Walter called. “Cabe’s on the way in. We have a case.” 

“Coming,” Toby replied, knocking shoulders with Paige and smiling conspiratorially. 

* * *

Happy left the shop that evening with a hundred and twenty dollars cash in her pocket. The work had been easy -- the same kind of stuff she’d been doing at Patrick’s shop -- but she enjoyed the simplicity of it, the satisfaction of finding a problem and solving it. People were always happy to have their cars fixed.

When she got back to the motel, she went to the front desk to pay for her third night in her room. The same woman from before -- Morgan, according to her nametag -- was there. When Happy asked to book another night, Morgan nodded.

“Of course. It’s just-- There’s some problem with a few outlets in one of the rooms. I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind taking a look? We could give you another free night here, of course, as payment.”

Happy smiled at the ease with which a new lifestyle -- a new home -- was falling in front of her. It was as if the universe was finally -- after a broken leg, a gambling boyfriend, a crazy-high-stress job -- giving her a break.

“I’d be happy to take a look,” she said.

* * *

Cabe’s case -- if you could call it that; it was just another boring security-system reboot -- kept the team busy until six. They got back to the garage at five of seven, and everyone waited around for Cabe to pass out the paychecks from the job.

When the Homeland agent go to Toby, he gave him a handful of envelopes.

“There’s your cut,” he said, “and Happy’s. We told the company we were a man down but they gave us our normal fee, so she got paid, too. And there are some checks from other jobs in the past few weeks, people who did the same thing, in there as well.” He looked at Toby almost pityingly. “Don’t know when I’ll see her again, but I figured, if anyone would be able to get this to her, it’d be you.” Then Cabe went over to give Sylvester his check.

Toby looked at his watch and then nearly ran over to Paige.

“It’s seven,” he said excitedly.

“Yes it is.”

“And you haven’t heard from her, have you?”

“I haven’t.”

“Then let Operation Girlfriend Recon begin!” Toby lifted a hand up and Paige high-fived him, laughing.


	57. Chapter 57

Operation Girlfriend Recon began in Paige’s car. Toby brought his laptop out there, away from the rest of the team’s prying eyes. In the parking lot, his computer just barely picked up the wifi from the garage.

“Okay,” Paige said when Toby got in, “I’m going to be straight with you: I’ve never tried to track someone down like this. Where do we start?”

“Well, the simplest thing to do is triangulate her cellphone. I just have to hack the carrier’s server.”

Paige shrugged. “Alright, doesn’t sound like something I can help with. But how about I be our DJ?”

Toby didn’t respond -- he was typing intently on his laptop -- so Paige put on the radio. She was flipping channels when Toby cursed quietly under his breath.

“What?” she asked.

“Her phone’s either dead or the battery’s been removed. We can’t track it.”

“Okay. So what next?”

“Bank records. We hope she used her credit card or debit card at some point, wherever she is.” Toby went back to typing; Paige kept flipping through stations. When she found a Taylor Swift song -- one of Toby’s favorites -- she let it play.

“Damn,” Toby said a minute later.

“Let me guess: she hasn’t used her credit card?”

“Once, outside of Sacramento. But it was at a gas station that was right off the highway; I’d bet she was just getting gas and then went back on her way.”

“Well, that gives us an idea of what direction she went, at least, right?”

“I guess.”

“What else could we try?”

“Well, we could look through traffic-camera footage to find her truck, but that could take days. Other than that…” Suddenly, Toby looked up at her with a grin.

“What? Did you think of something?”

“Patrick said she texted him yesterday. I can trace where that text came from.”

“It might’ve just been sent at another gas station on the way to wherever she went,” Paige warned.

“Maybe,” Toby said, but he was back to typing.

The Taylor Swift song dissolved into a commercial and Paige started looking for a new station. Before she found one, though, Toby reached over and turned the radio off.

“Hey,” Paige said, feigning offense. 

“I found her.”

“You did?”

“That text was sent from a tiny town in Oregon called Brookings. It’s two hours east of the closest interstate; she wouldn’t just be passing through. She’s there.”

“Or she stopped there for the night and moved on,” Paige said, trying to keep Toby from getting his hopes up. “Or she specifically avoided interstates because she knew we’d think she’d stick to them.”

“No,” Toby said, shaking his head. “When she left, she would’ve been too mad to think that sneakily. She might not be there anymore, but she was definitely there for at least a night. And a town that small -- look at this.” He pointed to something on the town’s Wikipedia page. “There are less than seven thousand full-time residents. A passerby coming through a town like that, people will remember her. We have to go there.” 

“Hold on a second, Toby. It’s a Monday. This town is in Oregon -- that’s a day’s drive at least. What are we going to do, tell Walter we’re bailing out for the next two days and road trip up there?” 

“I don’t know. All I know is that I’m going up there to look for her. You can come with me or not; either way, I’m going to find her.”

Paige sighed. “Alright. But I’m driving; I hate your car.”

Toby smiled. “Deal.”

* * *

Paige picked Toby up early the next morning. They told Walter that Toby had some relatives he needed to visit and that Paige was coming along for moral support; Walter had seemed confused, maybe even suspicious, but didn’t ask any questions.

Toby came prepared: he’d printed out all the information on every hotel, restaurant, and gas station in Brookings he could find, which wasn’t really that much. There were two hotels, a diner, a McDonald’s, and a single gas station; by the time they were two hours outside of LA, Toby had every detail memorized. 

As Toby was reading, Paige was beginning to have doubts about their trip. It was obvious Happy didn’t want to be found -- there wasn’t another reason to turn off your phone and stop using your credit cards. Was it really a good idea to try to track her down? It was possible -- Paige didn’t even want to think it -- that something bad had happened to Happy, and that was why there was no electronic trace of her in the past two days. Paige told herself she was just looking out for her friend’s well-being. But, if she were being honest, she’d admit that she missed Happy; she wanted her to come back to Scorpion. And that wasn’t really a good enough reason to try to draw her out of hiding.

“Don’t do that,” Toby said, interrupted Paige’s thoughts.

“Do what?”

“You’re starting to think this is a bad idea. That we should just let Happy have her space. We shouldn’t.”

“I really don’t think your opinion on this is unbiased, Toby.”

“Maybe not. But here’s what I know as a fact, not an opinion: Happy has spent her whole life fending for herself. If she truly doesn’t want to be found, we’ll never find her.”

“Then why are we even doing this?”

“Because I don’t think she doesn’t want to be found. I think she’s angry with me and sad about what’s happened, and when she gets angry and sad she runs away. That’s what Happy Quinn does. And, her whole life, she hasn’t had someone who cared enough to come find her. I think, right now, she wants to know that we care enough to come find her. So that’s what we’re doing: we’re proving that we care about her. And maybe I’m wrong; maybe we’ll never find her. Or maybe we will find her and then she’ll punch me and curse you out and run away again and that’s the last we’ll hear of her. But I don’t think so. I think she wants us to bring her home. So that’s what I’m going to try to do.”

Paige sighed. “If you say so.” 


	58. Chapter 58

By the time Paige and Toby got to Brookings, it was too late for anything to be open. They checked into one of the two hotels; they’d start asking around about Happy in the morning. 

* * *

The next morning, Happy went to the gas station for work. She’d spent the day before -- a Tuesday; her off day -- driving around Brookings, which got boring after the tenth hour of it. She was considering asking Barry if she could come in more often.

Jerry was out sick, so she worked on a broken-down pickup truck alone. It was blissfully quiet in the shop, with nothing but her work in front of her.

Around noon, Barry came into the garage with a glass of Coke for her. She accepted it and thanked him.

“How’s the work coming?” he asked.

“Fine.” She took a sip of the soda. She hadn’t had any since the last time they’d had a party on the roof of the garage. She wasn’t a big soda drinker, but Cabe liked to mix it with rum for her. She remembered the team’s dancing and drinking and eating -- those nights, when they had parties up there, were some of her favorite in her life. 

She shook her head; she didn’t want to think about that -- about what she left behind in LA.

She looked to Barry, trying to distract herself. “This guy” -- she pointed to the truck -- “is going to need a lot of work.”

“You okay doing it on your own?”

“Sure. It may take a few days, but I’ll get her done. Hey, Barry?”

“Yeah?”

“I was wondering…” Happy trailed off, distracted by a car pulling into the gas station’s parking lot. She wondered for a minute if it would be another car repair, but then she recognized the people in the front seats.

“Shit,” she said.

“What?” Barry followed her eyes to the car outside. “You know them?”

“Yeah. Just… tell them I’m not here. Tell them you’ve never seen me, okay? I’m not here and I was never here. Shit, they can’t see my car, can they?”

“You can’t see the back lot from the road, no. But, Happy, is everything okay?”

“Yeah, just -- you don’t know me, okay?” 

“Okay…” Barry looked confused.

Happy slipped into the supply closet and closed the door behind her.

* * *

“Alright, Toby,” Paige said when they pulled into the lot. “You have the picture of her ready?”

“Yep.” Toby pulled out the tiny picture of Happy that he kept in his wallet. She wasn’t really smiling in the photo -- Toby’d ambushed her with a camera after she’d spent an hour working on her truck -- but she looked content, her hair messy and her clothes covered in grease. He loved the picture.

“You wait in the car,” Toby said. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

He walked inside and went up the register. The man there -- a chubby guy, about Toby’s own age -- looked at him, arms crossed, already defensive.

“Hi there,” he said to the man. 

The man grunted in response.

“I’m looking for a friend of mine.” Toby slid the picture onto the checkout counter. “I think she’s staying here in Brookings, or at least passed through a few days ago. You wouldn’t have happened to see her, would you’ve?”

The man barely glanced at the picture.

“Can’t say I have.” 

“Are you sure? I’m pretty positive she came through here, and I really need to find her.”

“Why you so desperate to see her?”

Toby went with the story he thought up in the car, something not far from the truth: “She’s a contractor for the Department of Homeland Security. There are some high-stakes jobs in her area of expertise and we really need her, sooner rather than later.”

The man frowned. “Well, I wish I could help, but I haven’t seen her.”

“You’re sure?” 

“Positive.” 

“Okay. Well, thanks for the help, anyway. If you see her, would you mind telling her Toby’s looking for her? She’ll know who I am.”

“Sure,” the man said, in a way that made it obvious that he would definitely not be telling anyone anything.

Toby walked back out to Paige’s car and got in.

“Happy’s here,” he said.

“What? Does this guy know her?”

“No. Or, he  _ claimed  _ he didn’t, but he was giving me every tell in the book. Awful liar. He’d make a terrible poker player.”

“Toby, focus.”

“Right. Happy’s here -- or, at least, she was here. That guy definitely met her, and he knew her well enough to lie for her. I don’t think she just passed through town; I think she’s staying here. We just have to find her.”

* * *

Happy waited until she heard the rev of an engine driving away to come out of the supply closet. Barry was on the other side of the door, waiting for her.

“Alright, Happy. You have a lot of explaining to do.”

Happy sighed, sliding down to sit on a work bench. Barry pulled a stool over and sat across from her.

“Who was that guy?” Barry asked, when it became clear Happy wasn’t going to start talking on her own. “An old boyfriend? A bounty hunter?”

Happy scoffed. “Not a bounty hunter. I’m not in that kind of trouble.”

“Well, what’s going on? He said something about Homeland Security. Do you really work there?” 

“I do -- or, I did. I don’t really know if I still have my job there.”

“So who was this guy? A coworker? A boss?”

“He was my coworker. And… my boyfriend.” 

“And the relationship went south?”

Happy nodded.

“Did he start… hitting you?”

“No. God, no. But our relationship really fell apart. I just wanted to get away from it all, you know? So I came here.”

“Where are you from? Portland?”

Happy laughed. “LA.”

“Dang, lady, you came a long way to get rid of those people.”

“Not far enough, I guess.”

“Mm. Well, that boy of yours was giving me a funny look. I think he thinks I was lying about not knowing you.”

“He’s pretty good at telling when people are lying. He probably knows I’m in town. I bet he’ll go to the motel where I’m staying next.”

“Well, I can’t vouch for Morgan’s ability to lie, but--”

“You know Morgan?”

“Happy, there are six thousand people in this town, and I know just about every one of them.”

“Oh.”

“Like I was saying, Morgan’s pretty discreet. If they come asking for you, she won’t say anything. Can’t say that that guy won’t know she’s lying, but it’s not like she’ll let ‘em into your room or anything. I’ll tell you what: I’ll call over there now. If those guys stop by that motel, Morgan’ll tell me, and she’ll tell me when they leave.”

“Thanks, Barry.”

“Don’t mention it.” Barry got up to go but then turned back to her. “But Happy?”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t mean to stick my nose where it doesn’t belong, but we’re a long way from LA. For someone to track you down all the way out here… I don’t know what happened between you two,  but he clearly wants you back.”

“Yeah, Barry, he clearly does.”

Barry shrugged and walked out of the garage, leaving Happy alone. 


	59. Chapter 59

“I’m telling you, this woman isn’t staying here,” Morgan insisted.

“I understand that you’re telling me that,” Toby said. “But regardless of what you’re saying, if you see her, please give her this note. Okay?” He held out a piece of paper he’d scribbled on in the car on the way over from the gas station.

“Okay, but I’m not going to see her.”

“Okay. But if you do.”

“Okay. But I’m not going to.”

Toby smiled at the young woman’s complete inability to lie. “Okay. Have a nice day, then.”

“You too, sir.”

When Toby got back out to the car, Paige was hanging up from a phone call.

“Who was that?”

“Ralph’s sitter.”

“He doing okay?”

“Yep, all’s well over there. Any luck with the front-desk lady?”

“Happy’s definitely staying here. The lady claimed she hadn’t seen her, but she was lying. I left her a note to give to Happy.”

“If she’s claiming Happy’s not staying here, would she give her a note?”

“I think so. There’s no reason for her not to, you know?”

“I guess. So what do we do now?”

“We--” Toby was interrupted by a text message. He glanced at it, hoping against hope that it was Happy, but it wasn’t.

“Who’s that?” Paige asked.

“Nothing. Just an old friend.” Paige raised her eyebrows. “Not a gambling buddy,” he clarified.

“I didn’t say it was.”

“But you were thinking it.”

Paige shrugged without responding.

Toby wrinkled her nose at him childishly. “Anyway, what was I saying?”

“I asked what we’re going to do now.”

“Oh, right. We’re going to go home.”

“What?”

“We’re going to go home. We’ve done what we came here to do.”

“We did? I thought we were bringing Happy home?”

“Well, in an ideal world, yes. But Happy’s not ready to come home. We showed her that we want her, that we care about her.”

“We didn’t even see her.”

“But that gas-station guy and the motel lady will tell her we were here. And she’ll get my note. She’ll know we care enough to drag our butts up here and look for her. I think that’ll be enough.”

“Really? Where’s the ‘I’m afraid she’ll never come back’ Toby from three days ago?”

Toby shrugged. “I don’t know. I just know that the right thing to do right now is go home. It’s like mother’s intuition.”

“You’re not a mom.”

“Okay, boyfriend’s intuition. Harvard-trained psychiatrist’s intuition. Devilishly-handsome genius’s intuition. Take your pick.”

Paige rolled her eyes. “Well, if you want to go home, then I guess we’re going home.”

Toby grinned. “Road trip round two, here we come.”

* * *

When Barry got the call saying Paige and Toby had left the motel, Happy went back there. She wanted to just slip into her room and go to sleep, despite its being only four in the afternoon, but Morgan stopped her.

“Hey, Happy, those people Barry said were looking for you? They left a note.” She held out a small, folded piece of paper.

“Thanks, Morgan.”

“Anytime. Is everything okay, Happy?”

Happy shrugged. “I guess.”

She walked down the hallway and into her room before she unfolded the note. It was written in Toby’s chicken scratch, reminding Happy of the dozens of love notes he’d left her in the past few years. 

_Dear Happy,_

_I love you. I just want to start with that. I love you and I’m sorry -- for everything. You deserve so much more than I’ve been able to give you over the past few weeks. And if you never want to hear from me again, I’d understand. I’d hate that, Hap, but I’d understand._  

_God, Hap, we all miss you. Our team’s lacking without you but, more than that, we miss our friend. It’s not the same without you. You know, the other day I made a sex joke while we were on a case, and no one slapped me. It was beyond bizarre._

_I didn’t mean to go all stalker-ex-boyfriend on you. I just really needed you to hear this. We’re going back to LA. If you really want to stay in Brookings, we won’t stop you. But we want you back, Hap. I want you back. I miss you, Happy. I love you and I’m sorry and I miss you._

_I know, with my addiction, it’s been a long road. But I’m trying, Happy. I really am. I’m trying for you, because you deserve that, but I’m trying for me, too. That’s important to know. I want you to know that, if you never come back, it won’t ruin me. I’ll be sad -- so, so sad, Hap -- but eventually I’ll be okay. I don’t want you to come back because you have to._

_I want you to come back because you want to. I want you to want to come back, Hap. Tell me what I can do, if there’s anything I can do, and I’ll do it. In a heartbeat, I’ll do anything to make you want to come back. I’m ready to fight for you, Happy Quinn. I’m ready to fight and I will._

He’d signed it _with love, your goofy psychiatrist_. On the back, there was a postscript.

_I hope this isn’t the last I hear from you, Happy, but, if it is, these are the the words I’d want to be my last to you: I love you. You are brilliant, you are perfect, and I will never stop loving you._

When she finished reading, Happy folded up the paper and wiped tears from her eyes.

She had to talk to Toby.

She went over to her bag and pulled out her phone and its charger. Its dead battery took a moment -- a horribly, aggravatingly long moment -- to come to life. When it did, she went to call Toby, but she was interrupted by a notification about a voicemail message from him. She listened to it.

_I was trying really hard to give you your space, like you wanted. God, I don’t even know how many times I’ve almost called you in the past few weeks…. But, God, Hap, I’d really like to talk to you. I love you, Happy._ She could hear the desperation, the loneliness, in his voice.

When Toby’s voicemail ended, she was left alone, in the silence, in her motel room in the middle of nowhere in Oregon.


	60. Chapter 60

The day after Paige and Toby got back from Oregon, the team was called into work early for a case -- finally something interesting, if dangerous. It lasted all day; Toby didn’t get home until close to midnight.

On the way from his car to his building, he called Christine; the call went straight to voicemail.

“Hey,” he said to her machine. “It’s Toby. I know it’s late. I just wanted to say that I’ve been sober for going on five days now. It’s not a year, or six months, or even thirty days, but it’s something. I think I’m ready to start going to meetings again. So I guess I’ll see you at the meeting Saturday, if you still go to that one. And… thanks. Thanks for sticking with me through this whole thing. And it might not be over; I don’t know. You know how these relapses are. But… anyway, I’ll see you Saturday.”

By the time he hung up the call, he was inside his apartment, closing the door.

“Oh, do I know how those relapses are.”

Toby jumped at the words. He turned to see a familiar face on the sofa.

“Happy?”

She got up. “Hi, Toby.”

“You’re back.”

“I’m back.”

She looked different -- he’d forgotten just how beautiful she was.

“I got your message,” she said in response to his stunned silence. “And your note.”

“I’m glad they reached you.”

“How did you find me?”

“We traced the text you sent your dad.”

She nodded. “I figured. I guess I wasn’t super good at covering my tracks, huh?”

He shrugged. “Well, I’m sorry I went all stalker on you. I just… wanted you to know some things.”

“I’m sorry for making you go all stalker. I shouldn’t have just dropped off the map like that.”

Toby shook his head. “Happy, you have nothing to apologize for.”

“No, I do. You didn’t deserve me deserting you.”

Toby opened his mouth to protest, but he didn’t want to start an argument. Instead, he said, “God, it’s been so long since I’ve seen you.”

“Three and a half weeks, right?”

“Twenty-six days, but who’s counting?”

Happy smiled but didn’t respond. Toby wanted so badly to know why she was here -- was this a goodbye? -- but, in that moment, he couldn’t read her face.

“So,” he asked, “are you… back? Like, _back_ back?”

“I’m here, yeah. I want to go back to work -- real work, not fixing the umpteenth car. And I think I want to come back here.” She motioned around the room.

“ ‘Here’ as in… our apartment?”

“Our apartment… Our relationship.”

Toby’s jaw slacked in shock at her words. “What? Aren’t you still mad?”

“I was mad -- maybe I still am. I don’t know. I was mad, and then I was sad, and then I felt guilty for going to my dad’s place, and then I felt mad that I felt guilty. Then I ended up in Oregon and I didn’t even know what I felt anymore. But, I don’t know, life is short, you know? If Scorpion has taught me one thing, it’s that. And I don’t want to spend my life hiding away in some middle-of-nowhere town in Oregon being mad at the one man I love-- Are you crying?”

Toby wiped at his eyes, which had filled with tears. “Hell yes I’m crying! Do you ever hear yourself right now? I can’t believe this. Happy Quinn, making a real, live proclamation of love. Pigs must have started flying when I wasn’t looking.”

“I don’t know if I’m going to be here forever,” Happy warned. “I can’t tell you that I’m going to be here through an unlimited number of relapses or whatever. But I’m here now, and I want to make this work. Is that enough for you?”

She looked at him, worry on her face.

“Enough? Is that _enough_? Happy, that’s _everything_. You’re everything, you know that? Every day with you -- it’s more than enough. God, I love you so much.”

Happy laughed at his lovey-dovey words. Toby pulled her in for a kiss, cutting off the laugh. For both of them, it felt natural, right, like what they should be doing. It was the first time either of them had felt something so right and natural in twenty-six days -- but who’s counting?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is such a short chapter; I didn’t want to add anything to it that might take away from the mushiness of the reunion. But more is coming soon!


	61. Chapter 61

When Toby awoke the next morning, Happy was lying beside him in their bed, tangled in the sheets. He had to remind himself that she was real, she was home. He still didn’t really believe it.

He got up to go into the kitchen and start making breakfast. A few minutes later, he heard rustling from their bedroom. Happy appeared in the hallway, rubbing her eyes tiredly. She sat down across the breakfast counter from him.

“Hey, doc.” Her voice was raspy from sleep; she cleared her throat.

“Hey.” He walked over to the counter and gently pushed a lock of her hair behind her ear. “How did you sleep?”

“Well. It’s nice to be home.”

He smiled at her.  “You’re beautiful, you know that?”

She grinned. “What have I done for three weeks without your constant compliments inflating my ego?”

Toby shrugged innocently. “Hey, nothing I say isn’t true.” He turned back to the stove, where his eggs were half-cooked.

Happy got up to get a glass of milk but paused when she saw a note scribbled on the fridge: _Taylor Thompson_ , followed by an address in Nevada and phone number.

“Who’s Taylor Thompson?”

Toby looked over the note. “Oh, right. I’ve been trying to track her down for a while -- I actually just heard from her when we were in Oregon looking for you.”

“But who is she?”

“You know who she is.”

“I do?”

“Yeah. Thompson’s her husband’s name; you knew her as Taylor Romano.”

Happy’s eyes widened. “My old foster sister? The one whose jaw got broken by our foster dad?” Toby nodded. “I forgot I told you about her.”

“I’ve been working on finding her for a while now. It was hard; I didn’t have much to go on. But I know some people.”

“Have you talked to her? Is she… is she doing okay?”

“She’s doing great, actually. A husband, two kids -- they’re adorable; I’ll have to show you the pictures she’s posted on Facebook. She’s a social worker now.”

Happy nodded. “Makes sense. She was always so sweet.” She looked up at him. “So you’ve talked to her, then?”

“Yeah, but I didn’t mention you -- I just said I was a psychiatrist doing a study about former foster children. I just thought, in case you wanted to reconnect with her, I’d get her contact info. No pressure, of course; I don’t think she has any idea I know you, so--”

Happy cut him off by coming forward and wrapping him in a tight hug.

“Thank you.”

They stood together like that for a few minutes. Toby didn’t say anything. When Happy pulled back, her eyes were red with tears.

“Um,” she said, “I think I should shower. I just need my shampoo…”

“From Patrick’s place,” Toby finished.

Happy bit her lip. “Yeah.”

“You don’t want to see him?”

“No. Or, well, it’s just that, if he knows I’m moving back in…”

“He’ll be mad.”

“Yeah. I don’t want to deal with that right now.”

“We could go later.”

Happy shook her head. “No, we should just get it over with. Just… brace yourself. It’s not pretty when he gets mad.”

Toby smiled. “We’ve faced terrorists, drug dealers, and international criminals, Hap; I  think we can handle your dad.” 

* * *

 When Patrick opened the door to his apartment to find his daughter standing in the hallway, his face lit up.

“Happy! You’re back!” He leaned in to hug her, catching sight of Toby behind her as he did so. “And you brought Toby.” The clipped comment brought their hug to an abrupt end.

“Hey, Patrick,” Toby offered.

Patrick grunted in response.

“Dad,” Happy said, “I need to grab my stuff. I’m going back to my apartment.”

Toby resisted the urge to groan behind her. They’d gone over this in the car; she was supposed to thank her dad for letting her stay with him before gently breaking the news that she was going back to the hated boyfriend. Happy seemed to have forgotten that advice.

“You’re moving back in with Toby?” Patrick frowned down at her.

“Yes.”

“Happy, can we talk for a minute?” He glanced at Toby. “Alone?”

“Dad, please, I really don’t want to do this right now.”

“Just for a second. You don’t mind, do you, Toby?”

Toby shook his head innocently. Patrick led Happy into the apartment, shutting the door behind her. Toby was left alone in the hallway. Muffled voices came through the door, eventually erupting into argumentative shouts. Toby only picked up bits and pieces. _Unreliable… None of your business… Know what’s best… Leave me alone._ After three or four minutes, Happy pulled the door open, a strained smile on her face.

“You can come in now, doc,” she said, feigning cheer. Patrick seethed behind her. Toby stepped into Patrick’s living room. Happy disappeared into the spare bedroom and started packing her things. Toby stood awkwardly by Patrick, who obviously wasn’t in the mood for small talk; the two waited in silence. Patrick’s anger was nearly palpable; Toby saw where Happy got her short temper.

When Happy slipped from the bedroom into the bathroom to grab her toothbrush, Patrick turned to Toby.

“I don’t like this,” he said, his voice nearly a hiss.

“I think you’ve made that perfectly clear,” Toby murmured.

“Look, Toby--”

Patrick was cut off by Happy’s coming back into the living room, full duffle bag in hand. “Okay, we can go now.” Without looking at her father, she walked past them, out the door.

“Well… have a nice day,” Toby said flatly, and then he followed his girlfriend out of the building.


	62. Chapter 62

On the way back from Patrick’s apartment, Happy drove even more aggressively than usual; Toby had to shut his eyes to keep from trying to grab the steering wheel. When they stopped at a red light, he reached over and placed a hand on her knee.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” she snapped back.

“I know you probably don’t want to talk about it--”

“I don’t.”

“I know. But he’s your dad. He’s really just trying to protect you.”

“Protect me?” The light turned green, and Happy accelerated so fast Toby was thrown against the back of his seat. “He drops me off at an orphanage when I was two and I don’t hear from him again for twenty-five years. He lost the right to _protect_ me.”

“I know, but he’s probably just trying to make up for lost time. He didn’t get to go shoot the boys who broke your heart when you were a teenager, so now--”

“No boys broke my heart when I was a teenager.” Happy’s voice broke. “No one _cared_ about me when I was a teenager.”

She pulled into the lot of a gas station and slammed the truck into park just as she broke down in tears. Toby leaned over the center console of the car, trying to comfort her.

“Shh,” he said quietly, rubbing her back gently.

“Who the hell does he think he is, talking to me like that?” she cried into his shoulder.

“What did he say to you?”

“He just kept saying that we shouldn’t be together. That you’re unreliable, and all addicts are bad, and you’re no good for me… Stuff like that.” She leaned away from him and sniffled; he reached down and grabbed her hand. “I mean,” she continued, “it’s not even _true_.”

“Well,” Toby said carefully. “I wouldn’t say _that_.”

Happy looked at him sharply. “What? Are you saying that he’s right?”

“Not in that all addicts are bad. Or in that I’m no good for you -- I’m not really qualified to say something like that. It’s just, I _am_ an addict. And you know how addictions are. Don’t get me wrong, I love that you’re back. I wanted nothing more than for this to happen. But I just want to be straight with you, Happy. I don’t want you to think that it’s over -- that now I’m going back to meetings and the whole relapse business is just done with. I wish,” -- he tightened his grip on her hand -- “God, I wish I could promise that I’d never hurt you again, Happy. But I can’t. I can promise to try and try and try, but I can’t promise that I’ll never relapse again.”

“I know that,” she said softly.

“And Patrick does too. That’s why he’s worried.”

“You sound like you’re looking for an excuse.”

“What?”

“You sound like you’re just looking for an excuse for us not to be together. Are you just trying to get me to break up with you or something?”

“What? No, of course not. I would never do that. I just want--”

“Whatever.” Happy cut him off. “Let’s not talk about it.”

“Happy…”

“I said let’s not talk about it.” She quickly pulled out of the parking lot and started speeding down the street. She rolled down the windows, and soon the only sound was the rush of the wind, making all conversation impossible.

* * *

When they got back home to the apartment, Happy dropped her duffle bag by the front door and sat down on the couch, letting her head fall into her hands. Toby sat down next to her.

“Are you okay?” he asked softly.

“I’m sorry about what I said in the car,” she muttered. “I know you’re not trying to get me to break up with you. I shouldn’t have said that. I just wish it were different.”

“Me, too.”

“It was so much easier before, you know? When I could just pretend like it wasn’t happening. Like your meetings weren’t anything important and Christine was just your friend. When I didn’t worry about you when you came home late or didn’t answer my phone. Now… am I going to spend the rest of my life wondering?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going to happen in a month or a year or ten years. I wish I did.”

Happy sighed. “So where does that leave us?”

Toby pulled her next to him and wrapped her arms around him. “All I know is that I’m here and I’m trying as hard as I can. And that doesn’t mean everything is going to be perfect, and it doesn’t mean there won’t be nights when you have to wonder about me. So I think you just need to decide: is that enough for you?”

Happy burrowed her head into his shoulder. “This isn’t fair. It shouldn’t have to be like this.”

“I know. Trust me, I know.”

“I’ve spent a lot of time wondering when people would abandon me. I don’t want the rest of my life to be like that.”

Toby swallowed hard. He’d known there would be tough conversations between them when Happy came home, but he hadn’t expected this. “Okay.”

She looked up at him, pain in her eyes. “Can we just stay here tonight? Just like this? One last time?”

Toby leaned away from her, though it physically hurt to do so. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. It will just make tomorrow harder.”

She nodded. “So this is it. This is goodbye.”

“Or, this is ‘see you at work’.”

“Right. If I still have a job.”

Toby smiled joylessly. “Come on, Walter wouldn’t turn you away.”

“I guess.” Happy got up and grabbed her duffle bag, which hadn’t moved from where she’d dropped it by the front door when they came in.

“Happy, you shouldn’t leave.” She looked at him and for a minute allowed herself to hope that he was going to beg for her to come back. But instead, he said, “This is your apartment too. I should go.”

“No, stay. I have my bag packed already. We can talk later.”

“Where are you going to go?”

“Maybe back to my dad’s. He’ll be thrilled about… what happened.”

Toby didn’t respond. Happy glanced around the apartment, _their_ apartment. This would be the last time it would be “their apartment”, she guessed. She gave Toby a curt nod and then slipped out the door and was gone.


	63. Chapter 63

Happy didn’t make it to her dad’s place; she didn’t even make it out of the parking lot before she decided she had to go back. She re-parked her truck and ran back up to their apartment.

When she burst through the door, Toby was still on their sofa, looking numb. He turned surprisedly to see her when he heard her come in.

“Happy? What--”

“We’re not breaking up.” She said it defiantly, as if he might argue. “I didn’t stick with you for two years just so we could break up over -- over what? Not knowing what the future is going to look like? No one knows what the future is going to look like. I don’t care what happens next week or next month or next year; I’m here now, and I want to be your girlfriend, and screw my dad or anyone else who thinks otherwise. Okay?”

Toby had to hold back a laugh at the determined look on her face. “Okay.” He stood up and she walked into his arms. “So you’re okay with not knowing? With having to wonder?”

“Yeah. I think I’ve made my peace with it.”

“You made your peace with it in the five minutes it took for you to walk out of that door and then come back? That was pretty fast.”

“Oh, lay off,” she said. “Seriously, I want to be clear about this: I don’t know what’s going to happen with us, but I want to try to make this work for right now.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

Happy leaned her head against his shoulder, relieved. “Okay, so that makes… two big, romantic speeches from me in the last twenty-four hours?”

“I guess it does.”

“Don’t expect any more for the next, like, five years, okay?”

Toby laughed. “Okay.”

He leaned in and kissed her. Soon, they were leading each other to their bedroom.

* * *

An hour later, they lay in bed, wrapped in each other’s arms. Toby’s phone buzzed three times in a row, prompting him to lean over and grab it off the bedside table.

“Is everything okay?” Happy asked.

“Yeah, it’s just Walter.” He looked at her. “You know, no one from the team even knows you’re back.”

“Oh. I guess that’s right.”

“Walter’s very perplexed as to why I’m so late for work.”

Happy leaned over and checked the time from Toby’s phone. “Shoot, is it really past noon?”

“Yeah. And I’m not going to complain about spending the day in bed with you, but, you know, we could head over to the garage if you want. I’m sure everyone will be thrilled to see you.”

Happy felt a slight twinge of guilt, remembering how she had run off without a word to her friends. But it was quickly swallowed up by excitement at the thought of seeing everyone again.

“Sure, but I have to shower first.”

“I probably should, too, but you go first.”

* * *

After she had gotten out of the shower and Toby got in, Happy called her dad.

“Hello?” he asked as he picked up.

“Hey, Dad, it’s me.”

“Happy? I wasn’t expecting to hear from you.”

“Yeah. I’m sorry for our argument this morning, and for running out like that. It was all just… a lot.”

“Yeah,” Patrick breathed, “it was.”

“Look, Dad, I’m going to be with Toby now. I know you don’t approve, but I don’t want that to mean we can’t be close.”

Patrick sighed. “I’m not going to pretend to love your decision, Happy. But I’m definitely not the first dad to dislike her daughter’s boyfriend. I think I can learn to live with it.”

Happy leaned back against their bedroom wall, relieved. “I’m glad. So, maybe you I could come over sometime this weekend for dinner?”

“Sounds perfect.”

* * *

When Happy and Toby got to the garage, everyone was at their desks. It looked like a paperwork kind of day. Walter looked up from his computer as they walked in.

“Happy?” he asked. Everyone looked over, shocked.

“Hey, guys,” Happy said sheepishly. “I’m back.”

Sylvester came over and wrapped Happy in a tight hug. She feigned nonchalance, but she couldn’t keep the corners of her lips from tugging up into a smile.

“Glad you’re back,” he said.

“Yes, it’s nice to see you, Happy,” Walter added.

“You’re a sight for sore eyes, kiddo,” Cabe said, hugging Happy once Sly finished. “Glad you made it home.”

Paige came over and patted Happy’s shoulder. “We’re so happy to see you.”

“It’s nice to see you all, too,” she said.

“How’s Patrick doing?” Cabe asked.

“He’s doing well, I think. I just got off the phone with him, actually.”

“The phone? Aren’t you staying with him?” asked Sylvester.

Happy raised her eyebrows; she’d forgotten no one but Paige knew about her excursion up the west coast.

“Well, I was. Then I wasn’t -- I actually just got back from Oregon.”

“Oregon?” Happy almost laughed at the look of bewilderment on Sylvester’s face. “Why on Earth were you up there?”

“It’s kind of a long story.”

Sylvester just nodded, getting the hint to stop asking questions.

“Well, since you’re here,” said Walter, “I was hoping you could work on this tracking device we need for a case we got the other day.”

“So I still have my job?” asked Happy.

“Of _course_ ,” said Paige, at the same time Walter said, “Well, if there was anyone other engineers half as qualified as you, I might consider firing you. But there aren’t.”

Paige smacked him lightly; he looked offended.

“What? It was a compliment.”

“What he means,” Paige said, “is that we’d love it if you came back to work.”

Happy looked around at the group of smiling faces in front of her, the people who had become her family over the past four years. “I’d be honored to.”


	64. Chapter 64

Three weeks and a day after Happy came back from Oregon, Toby went to his sixteenth GA meeting since his relapse. The routine -- going to meetings, talking with Christine, resisting the gambling urges -- was starting to feel almost normal again. After the closing serenity prayer, Christine came up to him, smile plastered on her face.

“Well, Toby,” she said, “do you know what today is?”

“Thursday?”

“Well, yes. Okay, that was my fault. Do you know what _yesterday_ was?”

Toby didn’t need the hint; he knew what she was getting at. “My thirty days.”

“Your thirty days!” She pulled a small chip out of her purse -- red, for the one-month mark -- and held it out for him. “Congratulations!”

Toby took it reluctantly. The last chip she gave him, a twenty-four hour one, he’d thrown out as soon as he got home. It made his lip curl in disgust just to look at it; he’d had a _year_ of sobriety, and was now reduced to celebrating a single day of avoiding gambling.

He slipped the thirty-day chip into his pocket. It was slightly more admirable, though only very slightly. A month of sobriety. It was a start.

“I know,” Christine said in response to his silence, “it’s hard starting over. But you’re doing a great job. It’s a bit easier the second time, isn’t it?”

“I guess.”

She slipped her arm into his cheerily. “Come on, let’s go get something to eat.”

“It’s a bit late for dinner, isn’t it?”

“Who cares? It’s a big day.”

* * *

They went to a sports bar a few blocks from the community center, one they frequented for post-meeting meals. Toby ordered a burger and a beer, his usual.

“How many times did it take you?” he asked as their waiter was putting the food on the table.

“Did it take me to what?”

“How many relapses before the sobriety stuck?”

Christine sipped at her water before answering. “Well, I don’t want to say my sobriety has ‘stuck’. It makes me feel like I’m going to jinx it.”

“Well, you’ve got ten years under your belt.”

“People who’ve been sober longer than me have relapsed.”

“I know. It’s just, you’re my sponsor. I feel like you should be impervious to relapses.”

Christine chuckled. “I don’t think any of use are ‘impervious’. But, at any rate, I relapsed six times before this last stint of sobriety. My longest stint before now was four years.”

“Four years and then you relapsed?”

“Yeah. It stings, doesn’t it?”

Toby nodded; he felt slightly better about having to throw away his last one-year chip.

Christine shrugged. “ _C’est la vie_.”

“Mm.” He took a sip of his beer, and saw her eyeing him. “What?” he asked, guessing what her answer would be a second before she opened her mouth.

“You drink a lot.”

Toby shook his head. “Uh-uh. Not now. You’re not bringing this up now.”

“Why not now?”

“Because I just started going to meetings again for the gambling. My girlfriend just left me, and now she’s finally back, and I’m doing everything I can not to screw that up again. And, God, my dad died two months ago and I don’t even have time to think about it anymore, what with everything that’s been going on. Now is not the time to bring this up.”

Christine shrugged. “I’m not saying you have to do anything about it, Toby. I’m just pointing out that you happen to drink a lot.”

A sour taste came up in Toby’s mouth, and he took another sip of his beer to wash it away. He knew he drank more than the average person, more, perhaps, than was strictly healthy. He’d always written it off a byproduct of dealing with something else -- his high-stress job or his gambling tendencies or the fact that he had to keep up with Cabe’s liver-of-steel at team parties. But, looking back, he realized lately he was turning to alcohol more and more. It was no longer a social thing; he would drink alone on a regular basis. And he didn’t even drink things he _liked_ anymore. Since his dad died, since he relapse, since Happy left and then came back, making Cosmos always seemed like too much work. So he’d pull a bottle of Happy’s bitter whiskey down from their corner cupboard and pour himself a glass. The warmth is brought him was enough for him to get over the bite of its running down his throat.

Toby had been to enough twelve-step meetings to know what these actions meant, especially factoring in his dusting of addiction tendencies, as he’d joked with Paige years ago. Addicts often don’t become dependent on only one drug, and Toby was watching this play out in himself. Logically, he knew he should go to an AA meeting, even just to check it out, to listen to others’ stories and see if they mirrored his own.

But admitting that he had a drinking problem just sounded so _awful_. That morning he had felt secure in his sobriety from gambling for just about the first time since his relapse. The idea of starting from step one -- literally -- with another addiction, just the thought of it, exhausted him. And what about post-case celebratory drinks? He loved those trips to the bar; the whole team did. If he stopped going, the traditional would soon fall about, the team too guilty to go while he sat at home. Toby didn’t want that.

“I see those wheels turning,” Christine said, interrupting Toby’s thoughts. “But don’t freak out. It’s just a suggestion. Your drinking, it’s nothing like your gambling was. Really, I just wanted you to start noticing it more.”

“Mm.” Toby nodded. “Well, thanks, I guess.”

“Really, we’re here to celebrate.” Christine held up her glass. “To you.”

Toby clinked her glass with his bottle, smiling despite himself. “To me.”


	65. Chapter 65

When Toby got home from his meal with Christine, Happy was curled up with a blanket on the sofa, watching _Friends_ reruns. He was surprised she was still up; she had been exhausted when they left work.

She smiled at him when he came and sat next to her. “How was the meeting?”

“Fine,” Toby said curtly. He knew she was probably just trying to make pleasant small talk, but he couldn’t help but think she had been sitting here worrying about him, thinking he’d run off to gamble again. He immediately wanted to change the subject; he looked at the TV. “What episode is this?”

“I don’t know, I’m barely paying attention. I think it’s that one where Chandler thinks Monica’s getting a boob job even though she’s not.”

“Oh, right, ‘The One with the Boob Job’. That’s a good one.”

She chuckled. “I forgot you had all the episodes memorized.”

“Well, there wasn’t much else to do in med school while all the normals were studying for exams.”

Happy nodded understandingly, and then an awkward silence fell over the room. These silences had peppered their life together since Happy had come back from Oregon. After a minute Toby dug around in his pocket and pulled out his phone. As he did so, the thirty-day chip fell out on the sofa; Happy picked it up.

“What’s-- oh.”

“Oh, yeah. Thirty days sober, as of yesterday.”

“Hey, that’s great! Congratulations. I’m proud of you.” It was a different kind of pride than before, he knew. This pride was tempered by the knowledge that a relapse could happen at any moment, on any day. But it was still pride.

“Thanks, Hap.”

She leaned her head on his shoulder, and for a few minutes they watched Monica and Chandler argue on the TV. Then Happy spoke again.

“Were you... not going to tell me?”

“What?”

“About your thirty days. If I hadn’t seen that chip, would you have told me?”

“Oh. I don’t know. Probably eventually. I never told you about getting the chips before.”

“Yeah, but I kind of knew when all of the anniversaries were before.”

“Well, now you know. It started thirty days ago, yesterday.”

Happy sighed. “Doc, I keep thinking about what happened. And I keep wondering if maybe I could’ve done something differently.” Toby opened his mouth to protest, but Happy held up a hand to shush him. “And I know you're going to go into that whole ‘it’s my fault and no one else’s’ spiel. But you can say that all you want; it doesn’t make me wonder any less. What if I was more involved? Talked to you about your meetings more? Would that have changed anything? Is there something different I can do this time? I feel so powerless. I just want to _do_ something. I can talk with Christine, or help you go to your meetings, or _something_ , can’t I?"

“Hap, I love you so much for caring about me like this. But there’s really nothing you can do.”

“Well, if I don’t do anything differently, how do I know it’s not going to happen again?”

“You don’t -- _I_ don’t. No one knows what’s going to happen. All you can do is keep doing what you’re doing.”

“Einstein said the definition of insanity--” Happy startled to grumble.

“Is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, I know. Trust me, I know. But Einstein was trying to come up with a theory of relativity, not keep people from gambling. Addictions aren’t a logical kind of problem. If they were, I wouldn’t have one; every time I went to gamble, I’d just be like, ‘well, that’s an illogical thing to do’ and stop myself.”

“So I just wait for you to relapse again.”

The words stung Toby; he had to keep himself from wincing. “Yeah, if you want to put it like that. Look, Hap, you know that I’m doing all I can do. If that’s not enough, the door’s right there.” He pointed. “No one would blame you for leaving, least of all me.”

Happy shook her head. “Please don’t talk like that. You know I don’t want to leave.”

Toby did know that; they’d had this conversation before, multiple times.

“Remember,” Happy continued, “my big romantic speech from a few weeks ago? The one I said would be my last for five years?”

“How could I forget it?”

She smiled slightly. “I’m here for the long haul, Toby. And I don’t mean to complain about our situation. I just want to know that you’ll tell me if I can help you in any way.”

Toby leaned down and kissed her forehead. “I promise I will.”

“Good. So... do you want to put this” -- she picked up the chip from where she’d put it down on the coffee table -- “in that bowl?”

Toby had almost forgotten his old place for his sobriety chips. He’d shoved it in the back of their hall closet soon after his relapse.

“Oh. Maybe not _that_ bowl. A different one?”

“Good idea.” Happy popped up and slipped into the bedroom. Toby heard her rummaging through the closet. He leaned back against the sofa and rubbed his temples.

They’d been together nearly three years -- the longest relationship Happy had ever had, he knew. Before his relapse, he’d been thinking of checking out the local jewelry store for engagement rings. But, since Happy’s return from Oregon, there had been a layer of awkwardness to their interactions, a level of unsureness. Sometimes, being together felt comfortable, normal, just like it had before his relapse. But other times, everything felt new -- it was as if they had to relearn how to be with each other. Sometimes it felt like every conversation they had required an intense effort. They were both just trying _so hard_. On bad days, Toby found himself wondering how much effort you were supposed to put into a relationship before you gave up.

Happy reappeared, holding a small, glass vase.

“Will this work?”

“Sure, but what is it?”

“It was my mother's. My dad gave it to me a few weeks ago.”

“Are you sure you want me to use it?”

“Well, I’d rather you use it than have it sit empty in the closet forever. Besides, from what my dad has told me about her, I’ve always thought my mom would’ve liked you. I'm sure she wouldn’t mind.”

She looked at him with such hope in her eyes that he couldn’t help but smile. Just when nights like this came around -- nights where he started to feel like their relationship just _wasn’t_ _working_ \-- she’d go and do something like this.

“How did I get so lucky to find you?” he asked.

Happy grinned at him and walked forward to drop the chip in the vase. As she set it down on the coffee table, Toby watched her work, yet again in awe of her.

Maybe there was no limit to the effort you were supposed to put into a relationship. Maybe every day would be hard. But it would be worth it.

Thoughts of proposing were no longer at the front of his mind, by any means. But they were still there. It wasn’t the right time now, but maybe, just maybe, he could believe that the right time would eventually come.


	66. Chapter 66

The next day, Toby went out after dinner to run some errands; when he got back, armed with a bag of groceries, two new lightbulbs for their hallway, and a new pair of socks for Happy, he found Patrick sitting on their couch. He hadn’t talked to Patrick since they’d picked up Happy’s stuff from his place; the older man didn’t look too happy to see him.

“Toby,” Patrick said flatly.

“Hey, Patrick. How’s it going?”

“Fine. Happy went to bed about half an hour ago.”

“Oh?” Toby raised his eyebrows but didn’t ask why Patrick had hung around for thirty minutes after his daughter went to bed. A glance at the TV gave him the answer; the Dodgers’ game was just finishing.

“Dodgers won?” Toby asked, motioning towards the TV.

“Yep.”

“I hear they’re having a good season, unlike the Mets.”

“I don’t know about the Mets. Dodgers are doing well, though.”

“They’ve got that good new hitter, don’t they? Alan something?”

“Alan Grant. He’s batting close to a 400, last I heard.”

Toby whistled appreciatively. “We could use someone like him.”

“Okay, I can’t do this.” Patrick stood up abruptly. “I can’t just sit here and talk about baseball like nothing’s changed.”

“Hey, if you want to talk about what happened…” Toby had known a confrontation with Patrick was coming, but he hadn’t expected it to be so out-of-the-blue, so volatile.

“Like hell I do. God, I don’t even want to look at you. I can’t understand why Happy’d ever want to come back to you. She’s my daughter and I guess I support her decision, but I’m really just waiting for you to screw up again.”

Toby shrugged. “I think we all are.”

Patrick scoffed. “Sure, fine, act all nonchalant. I wouldn’t expect anything less.”

“I don’t mean to be nonchalant. You know I care about her more than anything, Patrick.”

“Really? You really care about her more than the casinos? ‘Cause it doesn’t really look like it from where I’m sitting.”

Toby frowned. He had to stop himself from giving Patrick a Al-Anon-esque lecture; it wouldn’t do any good, he could tell.

Reading Toby’s silence as defeat, Patrick pushed past him and went to leave the apartment. As he opened the front door, though, he turned back.

“You’ll never be good enough for her.”

“I know. But I’d like to spend my life trying to be.”

Patrick scoffed again, walking into the hallway and shutting the door behind him

Toby took him time unloading the groceries, carefully putting the cold stuff in the fridge, the dry goods in the pantry. When he finished, he walked into their bedroom. Happy lay splayed out on the bed, sleeping soundly. All the muscles in her face had relaxed, giving her the cliché sleeping look of innocence. She wasn’t under the comforter, but a small blanket was tangled up at her feet.

Toby picked up the blanket, careful not to disturb Happy’s legs, and gently laid it across her. She stirred slightly, her eyelids fluttering, threatening to open, but she stayed asleep.

_You’ll never be good enough for her_. Toby had known this for a while, accepted it as a fact of their relationship. He would never mention it to Happy -- she’d deny it -- but he’d always believe it. She deserved so much more than he could give her. There had been times when he’d considered packing up and leaving, abandoning Scorpion and letting Happy and the team live their lives without him. They’d all be sad at first -- Happy would feel abandoned, of course; it would devastate her -- but he thought they might get over it and move onto some better, post-Toby existence. There had been times when he’d truly thought post-Toby was the best-case scenario for everyone.

But he done a lot of meditating on it, since he joined GA and got a sponsor and started doing his twelve-step work. And he’d decided that maybe post-Toby wouldn’t be as grand a life for the team as he imagined. Maybe he actually did bring something to his relationships; maybe the gambling was simply an addiction, a compulsion of his, and not some sort of horrible character flaw that proved he didn’t deserve any kind of happiness.

He wasn’t good enough for Happy now, but maybe one day he would be.

He considered kissing her forehead, as if his affection might cross the boundary between consciousness and sleep to reach her, but she was a light sleeper and he didn’t want to wake her. So he just slipped next to her, stole a corner of her blanket to cover himself, and settled in for a life of trying.


	67. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who has followed this fic over the last year! It’s been a joy to write, and every time I saw a new review or comment, it really made my day. I hope you enjoy this very last chapter! For reference, it’s set approximately twenty years after the last chapter.

 Happy glanced at the clock; their daughters’ curfew was five minutes away. She shook her head and willed herself to stop worrying. Grace would come home; she always did. When she’d left the house that evening, Grace had claimed she was going to a diner with some friends from school. Of course, the barely-long-enough dress and furtive smile she was wearing begged to differ. Happy and Toby could both tell she had something a little more scandalous planned, but they’d allowed her to go, anyway.

Now, of course, sitting on the living-room sofa and staring at the clock, Happy wished she hadn’t. In the past few years, she’d become all too aware of that fact that in the fairy tales, it was always the kids who got to go on grand adventures; the mothers were stuck at home, waiting for their children to fly back through the window.

In an effort to get her mind off her daughter’s absence, Happy got up and puttered around the kitchen. There were two messages on their home phone, which she played. One was from Barry, asking about the visit she and Toby were planning to Oregon for the following month. The other was from Taylor, her old foster sister. Taylor’s house in Nevada was a four-hour drive from LA, but she and Happy had a monthly lunch date; they met at a restaurant on the LA-Nevada border, halfway between their homes.

She considered calling either of her friends back, but it was well past midnight and she didn’t want to wake them. She got herself a glass of water and went back into the living room. She took a sip from the glass and then set it down on the coffee table, next to her mother’s vase, which was now half-full with sobriety chips.

Toby had just gotten his twenty-year coin two weeks before. He’d quit drinking fifteen years before, too, though that had never been as much of an issue for him -- she sometimes caught him glancing wistfully at the wine list when they went to restaurants, but it never felt like as big a deal.

The real victory, in Happy’s mind at least, what that he hadn’t gambled since she’d come home from Oregon. Or, at least, that was what he told her. There were still times when they were watching TV together and he’d see a commercial for that off-track betting place a few blocks away and she’d feel him tense up next to her. There were still nights when he was out later than she was expecting, and she’d wonder. But he always came home, and he’d give some sort of reasonable story about where he was, and she always believed him.

That left her room to worry about her daughter.

Happy looked around the room. There were pictures hung up everywhere; as soon as Happy had gotten pregnant, Toby had spent way too much money on some sort of fancy camera, saying they needed to document _everything_. And document everything he had; they had collages of Happy’s growing belly, pictures of Grace in the hospital, her first lost tooth, her first day of kindergarten and every grade since, her with her friends and family. There were entire scrapbooks of weekend-long vacations; they were starting to drown in pictures. There must have been at least thirty frames around their small living room alone. On the side table next to Happy, there was a picture of her and Patrick on her wedding day.

She was actually surprised that Patrick had come to their wedding at all. He had hated Toby for a while; the two could barely be in the same room together. Between Toby’s relapse and the wedding, they probably said ten words to each other. But he’d still come. And eventually his resentment faded into a sort of normal, slightly-contemptuous father-in-law/son-in-law relationship. And then, around the time Grace was born, Patrick had even started to like Toby a little bit. Now, they actually managed to get through entire baseball games without arguing.

Happy looked at the clock again; it was now officially past curfew. Not crazy unusual for Grace, but if she were gone for another ten minutes Happy would start calling friends’ parents.

Calling around turned out to be unnecessary; Grace walked through their front door a minute later.

“Hey, Mom,” she said nonchalantly.

“You’re late,” Happy said.

“Sorry. My phone died, so I wasn’t really sure what time it was.”

Happy didn’t push it; she was just glad to have her daughter back safe.

“Where’s Dad?” Grace asked.

“Holed up in his office, writing a scathing review of Dr. Berkstead’s latest article, I’m sure.”

Grace nodded. Toby’s hatred of Quincy had developed over the years into a playful kind of rivalry. At a medical conference they’d gone to a few years back, Happy had actually befriended Amy while their husbands argued good-naturedly about the effects of meditation on something or other. They’d gone over to the Berksteads’ for dinner a few times since.

“Can we watch a movie or something?” Grace came and sat next to her mom.

“It’s past one in the morning, Grace.”

“I know. I just kind of want to be with my mom right now.”

Happy frowned; Grace was old enough that spending time with mom was a sick-day or vacation-day activity only, something to do when hanging out with friends wasn’t an option. Happy wrapped an arm around her daughter.

“Is something wrong?”

“No. Well, not really. I just kind of had a bad night.”

“Oh? How so?” Toby was normally the shoulder to cry on; Happy played more of the life-skill-instruction role in their family. She’s taught Grace to change a tire when she was three, but emotional conversations were still a bit out of her wheelhouse. Now, though, with college touring in their calendar and an empty nest on the horizon, she savored every opportunity to be close to her daughter, regardless of whether those opportunities landed in her comfort zone.

“I… well, I didn’t go to the diner.”

“In that dress? I kind of figured.”

“I went to a lacrosse party instead.”

“Do you know anyone on the lacrosse team?”

“Wendy’s brother’s the captain. It was at her house.”

“Uh-huh. And did something bad happen?” Happy had to work to keep her voice steady; she’d heard enough stories about sports-team parties to keep an army of worried moms up at night.

“Nothing _bad_ bad. But I’d had a couple drinks” -- Happy held back admonishment; she hoped underage drinking would be the worst part of this story -- “and then Wendy’s brother came up to me and started talking. And I’ve kind of had a crush on him, and he was kind of flirting with me, and it was nice, but then he just kissed me out of nowhere and it was… kind of violent? And I really didn’t like it. So I left.”

Grace leaned back, finished talking. Happy breathed a small sigh of relief. An over-eager boy was something she could handle.

“I’m so sorry, Grace.” She hugged her daughter tighter. “I’m glad you got out of there. Drunk boys aren’t the kind of people you want to mess around with.”

“Yeah. I just kind of want to forget about it. That’s why I wanted to watch a movie.”

“Well, then let’s watch a movie. Something funny, maybe?”

“I was thinking _Love Actually_.”

Happy smiled; Grace had inherited her father’s taste in rom coms. “Sounds good to me.”

“We have to invite Dad though. He’ll be so mad if we watch it without him.”

“Good idea. Toby?” she called.

“Yeah?” He appeared in the hallway.

“Are you still writing that review?”

“No, it’s all done. Fifteen hundred sixty-three words on why Whimpy Jerk Face is completely wrong about narcotics in--”

Happy held up her hands. “It’s a little late for medical jargon, honey. Do you want to watch _Love Actually_ with us?”

“It’s one in the morning.”

“And we want to watch a movie,” Grace said.

Toby smiled. “Well, I’ll never complain about _Love Actually_.”

He joined them on the sofa, so Grace was sandwiched between her parents. Grace turned the TV on and started scrolling through Netflix to find the out-of-season Christmas movie. As it started playing, Happy turned and looked at her daughter and husband. They sat curled up next to each other, Grace’s head on her father’s shoulder. Grace reached out and grabbed Happy’s hand, which she held tightly.

All in all, after tortuous childhoods and rocky starts to their adult lives, she and Toby had ended up with each other, a daughter, coworkers whom they loved, and a handful of really good friends. Soon, Grace would be off at college and they’d be lucky to get a weekly phone call from her. And, really, Happy knew it was possible that tomorrow Toby would go out and relapse. But, for now, they were all together and safe and sober, and she was so, so grateful for it.


End file.
